,OVIS ALBERT BANKS 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap..?&i Copyright No 



Shell. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Twentieth Century 
Knighthood 



A SERIES OF ADDRESSES 
TO YOUNG MEN 



BY 

REV. LOUIS ALBERT BANKS, D.D. 

|l 

AUTHOR OF 

Christ and His Friends, Anecdotes and Morals, 
The Christian Gentleman, Etc., Etc. 



FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 

New York and London 

1900 






9255 

Library of Congress 

Two Copies Received 
JUN 21 1900 

Copyright entiy 

SECOVf) 
Deli»«W to 

ORDER DIVISION, 
JUN 22 1900 



MK 
«/ 



COPY. 



£-> ^Copyright, 1900 
rW X by 

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 



Printed in the United States of America 



LC Control Number 




tmp96 027367 



TO 
MY DEAR BROTHER 

jB&warfc IFtwin ^Sanfcs 

THIS VOLUME 

IS LOVINGLY DEDICATED 

BY THE AUTHOR 



CONTENTS 



Page 
I. The Courage of Christian Knight- 
hood, 7 

II. The Simplicity of the True 

Knight, 20 

III. The Beauty of Knightly Gener- 

osity, 33 

IV. The Loyalty of a Noble Soul, . 47 
V. The White Life of Pure Man- 
hood, 61 

VI. The Knightly Reverence of 

Lofty Character, . . .80 

VII. Truth and Honor the Spurs of 

Knighthood, . . . .93 

VIII. Compassion the Glory of the 

Strong, 105 

IX. Hardihood the Safeguard of 

Virtue, 118 

X. Temperance the Flower of Mod- 

ern Knighthood, . . . 130 



TWENTIETH CENTURY 
KNIGHTHOOD 



i 

THE COURAGE OF CHRISTIAN 
KNIGHTHOOD 

Chivalry has been a word to conjure with 
for some hundreds of years. Altho the insti- 
tution itself has long since passed away, there 
is something so romantic and splendid in the 
traditions of "The Age of Chivalry," that 
nothing stirs the blood of the youth of the 
closing days of the nineteenth century more 
thoroughly than stories of the knights and 
ladies of that interesting and brilliant epoch in 
human history. 

It is certain that chivalry, in the first ages 
of it, tended to promote order and good 
morals ; and tho in some respects imperfect, it 
produced the most accomplished models, not 
only of public valor, but of those pacific and 
gentle virtues that are the ornament of domes- 



8 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

tic life. And it is worthy of consideration 
that, in ages of darkness most rude and un- 
polished, magnificent specimens of manhood 
were to be found whose characters had been 
formed by adhering to the laws of an institu- 
tion established solely for the public welfare. 
Some of these characters in the most enlight- 
ened times have never been surpassed, and 
very rarely equaled. 

While chivalry was in the days of its glory 
it labored usefully in all countries, both for 
the public and for the individual. Nothing 
was small and despicable in the eyes of a 
knight if it comprehended the welfare of any 
individual. If in the course of his voyages or 
expeditions he had received the hospitality of 
the meanest person, gratitude would never 
suffer him to consider that person but as a 
noble and generous benefactor; he declared 
himself forever after his knight, and swore to 
renounce all the glory that could be proposed 
to him rather than miss an opportunity to de- 
fend, protect, and succor the man who had 
befriended him in time of need. This oath 
was considered inviolable. 



COURAGE OF CHRISTIAN KNIGHTHOOD 9 

Chivalry during its golden days made the 
world a much pleasanter place in which to 
live. It did away with low suspicions and 
jealousies and filled the land with an atmos- 
phere of noble hospitality and courtesy. The 
historian tells us that in England in those 
days charity of manners reigned in all ; noble 
dames and gentle knights placed on the top of 
their castles a helmet, as a sign that all good 
knights and worthy ladies traveling that way 
should enter as freely into the castle as if it 
were their own. The greatest lords accepted 
without any scruple this sort of liberality ; not 
considering it so much a personal gift as that 
it associated them in the enterprises and glory 
of knighthood. But the courtesy they learned 
in these castles was above all riches ; no spirit 
of discord or peevishness was ever allowed in 
these knights toward one another; and their 
manners displayed every kind of friendship 
and good will. Thus was chivalry in those 
dark ages a source of continual benefits ; and 
its peculiar glories shone forth in the noble 
actions of valor, of friendship, of gratitude, 
and humanity. 



I O TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

In the very nature of the institution one 
of the greatest characteristics of chivalry was 
the courage it developed in the individual 
knight. It is hard for us to understand the 
intoxication of the ambition for glory, as a 
valorous knight, which possessed the youth of 
those days. The great tournaments of the 
times made a deep impression upon young 
knights who were training themselves to 
achieve glory in knighthood. Any who will 
acquaint themselves with the honors profusely 
bestowed on military talents and virtues will 
not be surprised at the dauntless courage de- 
veloped in the hearts of brave youth. The 
Olympic Games, celebrated by Pindar with all 
the pomp of sublime poetry and the triumphs 
of ancient Rome, do not exhibit a more glori- 
ous recompense. In one respect, chivalry was 
superior; for it humbled not the vanquished. 
The defeated knight did not blush to exalt 
the prowess of the victor; he might another 
time yield to his skill ; and his bravery height- 
ened, as it were, the glory of his defeat. 
Neither the wisdom of Greece nor the policy 
of Rome had conceived any system more 



COURAGE OF CHRISTIAN KNIGHTHOOD I I 

noble or more useful to form brave patriots 
and defenders of their country. 

The hero of the tournament was conducted 
into the palace and disarmed by noble ladies, 
who clothed him anew in a rich habit. Thus 
arrayed, he was led into the hall, where the 
prince was waiting to receive him, and was 
made to sit down in the most honorable place 
at the feast, the admired and honored fellow 
of the noblest men of his time. Encircled 
with so much glory, he would have required 
the warning given to the ancient victors, 
11 Remember, thou art mortal," if the precepts 
of chivalry had not taught him that simplicity 
and modesty alone gave a luster to victory, 
and if he had not been directed from a child to 
be the last who should speak high things and 
the first who should do them ; to be mild 
among the aged and stout among the brave ; 
and that he could never praise himself too lit- 
tle or others too much. 

r This spirit of martial enterprise reigned in 
all ranks of society during the best days of 
chivalry. Du Guesclin, a Frenchman who was 
taken prisoner by the English, on one occa- 



1 2 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

sion relied, with reason, on the love that 
reigned in the hearts of the people, both 
knights and ladies, for heroic virtue. When 
being made the arbiter of his own ransom, he 
fixed it at an excessive sum. The Prince of 
Wales, amazed at his presumption, asked him 
by what means he would ever be able to pay 
it. " I have friends/' he replied ; "the kings 
of France and Castile will not fail me in my 
need ; I know a hundred knights in Bretagne 
who would sell their lands to redeem me ; and 
there is not a woman in France, now spinning 
at her distaff, who would not work her hands 
off to deliver me out of yours ; and if all the 
amiable spinners in France are employed to 
gain my liberty, do you think I shall remain 
much longer with you ? " 

Du Guesclin, tho one of the bravest and 
best equipped knights of his day, was, con- 
trary to the custom of noble knights, reputed 
to be the ugliest man in France. But in spite 
of his homely face, his faith in the heroic spirit 
of the people was justified, and the Queen of 
England, wife of Edward the Third, was one 
of the first to contribute to the ransom of this 



COURAGE OF CHRISTIAN KNIGHTHOOD 1 3 

enemy of her nation; on which, throwing him- 
self at her feet to testify his gratitude, Du 
Guesclin said, " I had till now believed I was 
the ugliest man in France ; but from this 
moment of your Majesty's high bounty, I 
shall begin to conceive great things of myself; 
and well I may, by so fair a hand thus enriched 
and honored/' ' 

With this love of glory Alain Chartier was 
inspired in a poem in which he introduces four 
ladies, who are relating the different fates of 
tfieir lovers, each of whom was at the bloody 
battle of Agincourt. One was killed, another 
was made prisoner, the third was lost in the 
battle and never heard of more, the fourth 
was safe, but owed his safety to a shameful 
flight : " Ah ! woe is me ! " said the lady of 
this base knight, " for having placed my affec- 
tion on a coward ! He would have been dear 
to me dead, but alive he is my reproach ! " 
In this sentiment the poet was the historian of 
the soul of that day. This magnanimity of 
spirit and this esteem of courage and ardor to 
support it were engraven on the tenderest 
hearts, and were the rich fruits of ancient 



1 4 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

chivalry, which burst forth and nourished that 
multitude of heroes who have immortalized 
the age in which they lived and the romantic 
institution under which they earned their 
glory. 

/ Chivalry emphasized the theory that it is 
natural for youth to be courageous, and that it 
is the greatest shame for a young man to lack 
courage. The Knights Errant wore green as 
their color, because it announced the verdure 
of youth and suggested the vigor of courage. 
I am profoundly convinced that our own age 
would be greatly improved, and the outlook 
of civilization distinctly brightened, if there 
might be a wide stimulation of downright 
manly courage in the hearts of American youth. 
I do not mean physical courage only; but the 
courage to face the great moral and social and 
political problems of our time, and ride them 
down with the dauntless valor of youth. It 
is as natural now as it was in the days of chiv- 
alry for young men to dream dreams and see 
visions of courageous achievement. 

Perceforest gives a striking picture of a 
young man, whom King Alexander had just 



COURAGE OF CHRISTIAN KNIGHTHOOD I 5 

made a knight, and who was then left alone at 
the entrance of a forest : He looked up and 
down, and thought within himself, "It is a 
fine thing to be made a knight! " Then he 
curveted his horse, stretched out his stirrup, 
closed his shield to his side, and sought to be 
familiar with his new arms ; he then took out 
his sword, and began to turn it round and 
round, and point it as in a fencing-bout, or 
trial of skill, fetching a compass as at a tourna- 
ment, and saying to himself, "Now my joy- 
would be complete, if I could but find one to 
tilt with, that I might see if I could bear 
proof. " After this he boldly spurred his horse, 
and bounded round the forest so joyous, and 
so ardently desirous of a joust, that if he had 
not feared he would shiver his lance to pieces, 
he would have tilted at the first tree he came 
to. I pity the young man who has never had a 
gallop like that, even in what is supposed to be 
the prosaic age in which we live. But that is 
a courage of imagination, a courage of dreams 
that is as yet untried. The test comes when 
the enemy is to be met, and we must make 
good our dreams in the contests of real lifeA 



1 6 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

There was a certain joyousness and buoy- 
ancy in the courage of the knights of chivalry 
which it would be well worth our while to 
imitate in the nobler spheres where courage is 
needed. They never spoke of war but as a 
feast, a game, a pastime. Their description of 
a battle was " to play a great game/' And do 
you know the greatest deeds of human life in 
every age of the world have been performed in 
that joyous, buoyant, playful spirit? There is 
a demand for it to-day among the Christian 
young men of our time. It is not young men 
who go about Christian work in a grim spirit 
of slavery or heavy toil who accomplish great 
results, but it is the young men who enjoy 
their religion, who are happy in the conscious- 
ness that they are the brothers of Jesus Christ ; 
exalted that they belong to the noblest chivalry 
in the world, and who, appreciating the high 
honor that has been given them in that they 
have been knighted by Jesus Christ to repre- 
sent him in the world, are ready to tilt a lance 
with any enemy of their Master. They fear 
no foe since they wear the armor of their Lord 
and fight for his cause. Such a courage is 



COURAGE OF CHRISTIAN KNIGHTHOOD \J 

contagious ; one young man in a church or a 
social circle, who has intelligence and wit 
and culture, and at the same time is bubbling 
over with enthusiasm for Christ; rejoicing in 
the consciousness of his allegiance to Jesus; 
ready to speak out his defiant words against 
evil, tho evil may be in the majority; ready to 
drive his sword to the heart of a falsehood, 
tho that falsehood may be popular; ready to 
stand beside a weak and struggling cause with 
his shield up, and his helmet down, and his 
spear at rest, undaunted at any foes that may 
come against righteousness, is worth a hundred 
poor milksops who dare not say their souls 
are their own. Such a young man, wherever 
he may be, is worth his weight in gold a thou- 
sand times over to the cause of Christianity 
and righteousness. And such an honor, and 
such achievement, is within the reach of every 
young knight who has dedicated himself to 
the service of Jesus Christ.} 

As formerly the arms of Achilles excited 
the ambition of the Grecian chiefs, so did the 
knights desire to possess the weapons, and 
above all the swords, of their illustrious pred- 



1 8 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

ecessors, to use them in the day of battle, 
and to hang them up in their arsenals and tilt- 
ing rooms as curious monuments of ancient 
valor ; or dedicate them in the churches from 
motives of religion. The Duke of Savoy 
fought with the most unwearied diligence for 
the sword of the Chevalier Bayard, to place it 
in his palace ; but not being able to obtain it, 
he put in the place thereof all his other arms, 
which he gained by writing an entreating letter 
to the Lord of Chichiliane, in whose possession 
they were. In this letter he said: " I will 
cherish them in honor of chivalry, and place 
them in the choicest room of my palace ; and 
when I gaze with transport at these noble en- 
signs of valor, my joy will receive but one 
alloy, the reflection that they are now in the 
possession of one who is so much less worthy 
of this inestimable treasure than their first 
kind preserver/' 

( The Christian knight may arm himself with 
the very armor and carry the very sword in 
which and with which the sublimest deeds of 
Christian manhood have been achieved. The 
girdle of truth is within his reach, wherewith 



COURAGE OF CHRISTIAN KNIGHTHOOD 1 9 

to gird his loins. The breastplate of righteous- 
ness every young Christian knight may wear. 
He may shoe his feet with the preparation of 
the gospel of peace. And the shield of faith, 
which never yet failed to quench every fiery 
dart of the evil one, the humblest Christian 
warrior may wear upon his arm. The helmet 
of salvation and the sword of the Spirit — the 
helmet as secure and the sword as sharp and 
true as ever — await the use of the modern 
knight of Jesus Christ. 

And we do not go alone. We go under the 
leadership of one more splendid than the 
Chevalier Bayard. The age of chivalry was 
not so romantic as this. The air of to-day 
throbs with live questions ; the world needs 
the best brains, the strongest bodies, the 
purest hearts, to dedicate themselves to Chris- 
tian courage in solving the problems of human 
society and government, the problems of human 
life, in this the noblest era that the world has 
seen. ) 



( 



II 

THE SIMPLICITY OF THE TRUE 
KNIGHT 

No other merely human laws have ever en- 
forced, as chivalry did, sweetness, modesty, 
and simplicity of temper. The atmosphere of 
chivalry was one in which thrived that polite- 
ness and genuineness of demeanor which the 
word courtesy was meant perfectly to express. 
Such was the modesty and simplicity of the 
true knight that he ascribed everything to 
the hand of God, and praised him alone for 
the noble acts he was enabled to perform. 
Vainglory, or high conceit of any kind, was 
considered as a vice which extinguished the 
merit of the knight, and rendered him un- 
worthy the rewards and benefits of chivalry. 
Agreeable to these principles, King Artus in 
his instructions to his knights speaks thus to 
them : " I call to mind what a hermit said to 
me at one time, to chastise my vanity. ' If 
you had as many kingdoms as King Alexander, 
as much sense as the wise Solomon, and as 



SIMPLICITY OF THE TRUE KNIGHT 21 

exalted valor as the brave Hector of Troy; 
pride alone, if that reigns in you, will ruin all.' 
Guard against this vice which brings with it a 
whole legion of vices in its train! " 

The same principles of modesty and sim- 
plicity inspired the knights who were victors 
with the kindest attention to console the van- 
quished and soothe the smarting of their de- 
feat. "To-day," the victorious knight would 
say to the one whom he had defeated, and 
who had come to offer his hand in congratula- 
tion on his victory, " fortune and the fate of 
arms, not my superior valor, give me the 
advantage ; to-morrow, perhaps, I may sink 
under the strokes of an enemy far less power- 
ful than yourself." 

In every age genuine simplicity of character 
has been one of the chief characteristics of 
greatness. In the days of chivalry the noblest 
knights were those who looked on the practice 
of virtue and the satisfaction of doing good as 
sufficient recompense in themselves. What 
gives chivalry its lasting glory is that there 
were developed many such noble spirits among 
its knights, to whom the pleasure of having 



2 2 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

been useful to other men and the inward testi- 
mony that a generous soul feels in the dis- 
charge of its duty were more flattering than 
the applause conferred by the officers at arms 
or the tumultuous cries of the people in the 
tournaments and the combats. 

It may seem a strange thing to say, at first 
glance, but the more you study it the more its 
absolute truth will shine out, that simplicity 
and not display is the most popular character- 
istic in the world. Even in this world in which 
we live, and in this age which we call materi- 
alistic, this age in which men are talking about 
the vulgar display of wealth, simplicity of char- 
acter is held in as high honor as at any time in 
the world's history. And I think more so. 
If a man is to succeed in any department of 
human endeavor he will get along better with 
a simple, straightforward, genuine manner 
than in any other way. 

A bright physician recently said that when 
he was a student he attended a course of lec- 
tures on natural science. The first was given 
by a teacher of small repute in a preparatory 
school. This little insignificant man began in 



SIMPLICITY OF THE TRUE KNIGHT 23 

a pompous, sententious tone: " The primal 
laws of natural science are so recondite as to 
challenge the comprehension of the loftiest in- 
tellect." This was followed by the statement 
of these laws in technical language, majestic 
and ponderous. The physician says that the 
little professor may have known what he 
meant, but none of his hearers knew. They 
listened, perplexed and anxious for a while, 
and then gave it up, and sat careless and in- 
different. 

The next lecturer at the college was a man 
who at that time ranked as one of the most 
learned scientists in America. The pupils 
were apprehensive. If they could not under- 
stand the little man, what was the use of lis- 
tening to the great one ? However, the hall 
was filled, more from curiosity to see the 
famous naturalist than from any hope of ben- 
efit. When the hour arrived, a fatherly look- 
ing German stepped forward and, nodding 
kindly, said: " Young men, allow me to 
make a personal allusion. My father was a 
hatter, who lived on Third Street. His sec- 
ond wife was my stepmother, but kind and 



24 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

wise in her treatment of me. When I was a 
mere boy, I loved to study beetles and plants 
and birds. ' Let him do it/ she said. ' It is 
good for him/ When I was grown up she 
said, l That is his work. He must keep to 
it ! ' So it is owing to her that I have learned 
a little about these living things. I am now 
going to try to tell you something of the little 
I know." 

Of course these simple words brought every 
young man in the class room in a moment into 
a hearty fellowship with the truly great man. 
The truths he taught them were told with 
such modesty and simplicity, and with such a 
homely directness, that they were never for- 
gotten. 

True simplicity is often born of real brother- 
liness. Frances Willard in her autobiography 
tells of a visit to the home of John B. Gough 
at a time when he was the most famous lec- 
turer in the world. He was, as usual, full of 
anecdote and personation. He showed them 
with a sweet and gentle pride an elegant and 
complete set of Spurgeon's works which had 
been recently sent him, with a beautiful letter 



SIMPLICITY OF THE TRUE KNIGHT 2$ 

from the great preacher; and told how, on 
hearing that Mrs. Spurgeon, who had been an 
invalid and confined to her house for years, 
was lamenting that she " never could hear 
Gough," he said to Mr. Spurgeon, " She shall 
hear me if she wants to," and actually went to 
her sick room, stood up before her, and for 
an hour exhausted all the resources of his 
genius and experience to impress that saintly 
woman with the merits of the temperance re- 
form ! 

Gough told Miss Willard, playfully, that, 
being received by processions, bands of music, 
and all that sort of thing when he landed at Liv- 
erpool, and having had such a wonderful expe- 
rience in England, speaking one hundred nights 
in succession in Exeter Hall, London, and 
having reached people of all grades, from the 
nobility down, as no American had ever done 
(he was too modest to say all this, but Miss 
Willard knew it), he was rather nervous and 
timid in approaching New York harbor, as his 
return had been cabled and he did not know 
what demonstration might be made. But his 
eyes twinkled as he told her how delighted he 



2 6 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

was that " Brother Jonathan " held on the even 
tenor of his way, and there was none so poor 
as to do the returning hero reverence ; and, 
greatly relieved, he took a hack and drove to 
the hotel, newly enlightened as to American 
characteristics, and more profoundly impressed 
than ever that this is a great country. It was 
Gough's supreme brotherliness, combined with 
his intense earnestness to do good, which 
maintained ever his simplicity of character. 

Our greatest American, as would now be 
conceded on all sides if we were to ask for a 
verdict at the hands of the civilized world, is 
Abraham Lincoln. James Russell Lowell 
wrote of him : — 

' ' Nature, they say, doth dote, 
And cannot make a man 
Save on some worn-out plan, 
Repeating us by rote : 

For him her Old- World molds aside she threw, 
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast 
Of the unexhausted West, 
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, 
Wise, stedfast in the strength of God, and true. 
How beautiful to see 

Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, 
Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead ; 



SIMPLICITY OF THE TRUE KNIGHT 2 J 

One whose meek flock the people joyed to be, 
Not lured by any cheat of birth, 
But by his clear-grained human worth, 
And brave old wisdom of sincerity ! ' ' 

And Lincoln's supreme grace was his genu- 
ine simplicity of character. A new and 
beautiful story has recently been published 
concerning him. It was while he was a mem- 
ber of Congress and was at home in Springfield, 
Illinois, during the Congressional recess. He 
was going down the street one morning when 
he saw a little girl standing at the gate with 
her hat and gloves on as if ready for a jour- 
ney, sobbing as if her heart would break. 

"Why, what's the matter ?" inquired the 
tall Congressman. 

And then she poured her broken little heart 
out to him, saying that she had arranged to 
take her first trip on the cars that day, to 
make a visit to a relative, and the expressman 
had failed to come for her trunk, and she was 
going to miss the train. 

" How big is the trunk? There's still time, 
if it isn't too big;" and he pushed through 
the gate and up to the door. 



2 8 TWENTIE TH CENTUR V KNIGHTHOOD 

She took him up to her room, where her 
little, old-fashioned trunk stood, locked and 
tied. 

" Oho! " he cried. " Wipe your eyes and 
come on quick." And, before she knew what 
he was going to do, he had shouldered the 
trunk, was down stairs, and striding out of 
the yard. Down the street he went, as fast 
as his long legs could carry him, the little 
girl trotting behind, drying her tears as she 
went. They reached the station on time, and 
Abraham Lincoln sent his little friend away 
happy. 

You may see in that scene the same beauti- 
ful simplicity and grandeur of character which 
is illustrated in the Gettysburg speech, which 
is as immortal as human literature. 
/True simplicity of character is always illus- 
trated by those who care more for helping 
humanity and rendering the service to their 
kind which they are fitted by their gifts and 
training to give than for money or personal 
applause. There is a beautiful illustration of 
this in the conduct of General Leonard Wood, 
who in association with Theodore Roosevelt 



SIMPLICITY OF THE TRUE KNIGHT 29 

won fame at the head of the Rough Riders in 
the Spanish-American War. 

After the war General Wood was appointed 
military governor of the province of Santiago, 
in Cuba, and the story of how he cleaned up 
that pestilential city and restored order and 
confidence among the people, is one of the 
most heroic and creditable stories connected 
with that entire epoch. After his immediate 
work was accomplished General Wood visited 
this country and the Capitol at Washington. 
While in Washington the managers of a large 
corporation, who admired his eminent execu- 
tive qualities, wanted to put him at the head 
of their enterprise. He was offered a salary 
of thirty thousand dollars a year. That is 
about five times as much as he receives from 
the government for the work he is doing at 
Santiago. He declined the offer, however, 
without any hesitation, and went back to 
Santiago to clean drains, fight yellow fever, 
tranquillize a restless population, and to do his 
utmost to give the poor Cubans an object- 
lesson in honest government. There is a no- 
ble simplicity and heroism about such a deed 



30 TWENTIETH CENTURY KNIGHTHOOD 

as that, that makes a man feel like thanking 
God for the privilege of being a man and an 
American. 1 

I But for the hour we have a still more 
conspicuous example at this moment in the 
public eye. The reception given to Admiral 
Dewey on his return from the Philippines was 
certainly the greatest ever given to any man 
in America. Coming as it did from the whole 
people without any partisan discord or fac- 
tional feeling, it has not been surpassed as a 
triumph for any returning hero in the history 
of mankind. Compared with it the triumphs 
of the old Roman conquerors on their return 
from the wars to the . Imperial City pale into 
insignificance. But what is it that we honor 
most in Dewey ? What characteristic has been 
pointed out most frequently by the press, and 
by everybody that has commented on his bear- 
ing as a recipient of this world-wide congrat- 
ulation and hero worship ? Is it not this same 
simplicity of character ? There have been a 
dozen other men who have stood at the front 
during the recent war whose daring and cour- 
age were as conspicuous as Dewey's, but he has 



SIMPLICITY OF THE TRUE KNIGHT 3 I 

added, every hour that he has been before the 
public, to the love of the people for him, by 
the simplicity of his character expressed in 
every act of his life. 

When receiving great honors in New York 
harbor on the day of the naval parade, it was 
noticed that the officers on his flagship, the 
Olympia, did not wear their fancy uniforms. 
There were no gold epaulets or display swords, 
but all were arrayed in modest undress uni- 
forms. This was by command of the hero 
of the day. It was like the man, and it is 
because he is a man like that that the world 
applauds him as the greatest among recent 
heroes. j 

\ But the Christian knight must always go 
back for his supreme illustration to his Captain 
and Leader, Jesus Christ. And when with 
reverence we come to study his life we see at 
once that there is no characteristic that pro- 
claims more certainly the greatness of Jesus 
than the simplicity of his character. There is 
never any display. Vulgar pride has no place 
in his career. He goes straight on, day by 
day, using his great power with wisdom and 



3 2 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

gentleness and kindness, but always with mod- 
esty and simplicity. 

Young men, I call you to be knights of this 
noble chivalry ! It is the greatest privilege 
offered any man in our century. It will call 
you to make the very best of yourself, and to 
do the very noblest deeds in the noblest way. 
Carlyle once said that there is an ideal in every 
situation. To be a Christian knight in the 
new chivalry is to find the ideal in every situ- 
ation of modern life, and by the help of God 
to bring the life into accord with it. 



Ill 

THE BEAUTY OF KNIGHTLY 
GENEROSITY 

THE historians of the age of chivalry assure 
us that of all virtues the virtue of generosity 
was the most celebrated by the poets, or 
troubadours, the romance writers, and the 
jongleurs, or singers of their poems ; and that 
this also tended to the public good by the 
beneficent spirit it encouraged, and therefore 
was very wisely recommended with energy to 
the knights. 

In a very ancient manuscript, called "The 
Romance of the Wings," the poet set forth 
that the prowess of the knight was borne upon 
two wings, which were essential to his fame, 
and without which he could not extend his 
flight and nobly soar on high. These two 
wings were generosity and courtesy ; each was 
adorned with seven plumes, which were the 
signs of the different conditions or modifica- 
tions of these virtues, as essential as valor 
itself to the reputation of a good knight. 



34 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

Chivalry, adds this poet, is the fountain of all 
goodness, and can never be exhausted ; from 
God it comes, and the knights over whom it 
flows from head to foot are its sole possessors ; 
they hold those springs in fief which water and 
fertilize the rest of the world. 

One writer tells of a dispute between three 
troubadours in which the question considered 
was whether the qualities of equity, generos- 
ity and valor must be given each distinctly to 
a different knight or combined. They decided 
that in order to form a perfect knight all the 
tender offices of humanity should be united to 
the greatest valor, and the gentle emotions of 
pity and generosity to the afflicted associated 
with the strictest justice and integrity of 
heart. 

This beautiful characteristic of generosity 
was specially marked in the most famous 
knights of the time. Many stories are related 
to show the generosity and humanity of the 
Chevalier Bayard toward his enemies ; sparing 
their property, and paying as he went along 
for all he was furnished with. Being told 
that it was permitted in an enemy's country 



BE A UTY OF KNIGHTL Y GENEROSITY 3 5 

to live at their expense, he replied, "It is so; 
but I think we ought not to do all that is per- 
mitted ; the right of war is one thing, the 
right of justice another; I rebuke not what 
others do, but I will not do it myself." Once, 
on taking a prize, one of his knights, who was 
not present, expressing a grudge for the ad- 
vantage Bayard had gained, he generously 
gave the complaining knight half, which was 
7,500 ducats — for it was a great prize — and 
the other half he bestowed on his brave 
soldiers ; so forgiving was he, and so generous 
was his nature, that he reserved none for 
himself. 

f Generosity is one of the virtues belonging to 
strength. It does not appeal to us to see a 
weak man generous, for we feel that he cannot 
well help himself; but when we see a strong, 
powerful man full of kindly and gracious gen- 
erosity, it is impressive./' Generosity is the 
luxury of power; it is the overflow of doing 
after a man has performed what could be rea- 
sonably and justly required of him; for a man 
must be just before he can be generous. Some 
men do not seem to understand that. It is 



36 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

no credit to a man who breaks up in business, 
bringing bankruptcy and sorrow to other peo- 
ple, to have it said about him that he was very 
liberal with his money. There is nothing 
heroic about being generous with other peo- 
ple's property. There is a good deal of that 
sort of generosity, but it is a sham, and de- 
serves rather to be called fraud. First of all, 
a man must deal justly with his fellow men; 
then there is the opportunity for generosity. ) 
The story is told of a young farmer named 
Steve, who went away to the city, was em- 
ployed by a railway company, and worked 
himself up, step by step, until he had a very 
fine and lucrative position. One summer he 
went home to visit his parents, and a hot 
afternoon found him seated under the old 
Baldwin apple-tree, with the half of a red- 
hearted watermelon in his lap. His father, 
who was busy with the other half, paused now 
and then to ask Steve about his new job, and 
what he paid for his fine clothes. Presently 
he wanted to know what they called his 
boy on the road — conductor, brakeman, or 
what? 



BE A UTY OF KNIGHTL Y GENEROSITY 3 7 

" They call me the General Freight Agent, 
father,'' said Steve. 

"That's a mighty big name, Steve." 

"Yes, father; it's rather a big job, too, for 
me." 

" But you don't have to do it all, Steve. 
You must have hands to help you load and 
unload?" 

" Oh, yes, I have a lot of help." 

"And the company pays them all? " 

"Yes." 

" How much do they pay you, Steve — two 
dollars a day? " 

Steve almost strangled on a piece of core, 
and the old gentleman saw that he had guessed 
too low. 

"Three?" he ventured. 

"More than that, father." 

"You don't mean to say they pay you as 
much as five? " 

"Yes, father, — more than twenty-five." 

The old man let his watermelon fall between 
his knees, stared at his boy, and whistled. 

Then an earnest look, serious and search- 
ing, came into his face, and leaning forward 



3 8 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

he said, breathlessly, "Say, Steve, are you 
worth it?" 

There is a good deal of teaching in that lit- 
tle story. First of all, before a man can talk 
much about generosity to his fellow man, he 
must be sure that he gives value received to 
the world for the blessings and bounties that 
are bestowed on him. A man must be just to 
his neighbor before he can be generous to him. 
f There is no grace of life more beautiful than 
generosity, and none the fruits of which are 
more delightful to the one who exercises it. 

Over forty years ago, when Charlotte Cush- 
man was at the height of her fame as a theat- 
rical star, during an engagement in St. Louis 
she employed a little boy, a little, ragged, 
unknown fellow, to carry her basket of jewelry 
from the theater to the hotel. Near the end 
of her engagement the boy was taken ill one 
night, and during the play was curled up in 
the rear of the stage among a lot of scenery. 
After the play was over he heard Miss Cush- 
man come out of her dressing room and say : 
41 Where is that boy who carries my basket ?" 

He replied, "Here." She walked across 



BE A UTY OF KNIGHTL Y GENEROSITY 39 

the stage, piloted by the night watchman with 
his lantern, and reaching out her hand to him, 
said : "I hope you are not going to be ill," 
and placed a coin in his hand. 

The excited boy scratched about and got to 
where there was sufficient light to discover 
that he was the owner of a twenty-dollar gold 
piece. He changed lodgings that night. 

The boy did not see Miss Cushman again 
for eighteen years. He was in the Boston 
Theater managing some entertainments which 
were meeting with great success. He thought 
of Charlotte Cushman, and telegraphed her at 
Newport, offering her one thousand dollars if 
she would give a reading in the Boston The- 
ater. She accepted. After the reading he 
went to her hotel and sent up his card. The 
bell boy returned with the answer, ""Miss 
Cushman says show the gentleman up." 

Miss Cushman met him very cordially in her 
room. She was in a happy mood, as the the- 
ater had been crowded with people. 

" Miss Cushman," he said, "I intended to 
hand to you on the platform this envelope 
containing a certified check for one thousand 



40 T WEN TIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

dollars, but I was so busy in front of the house 
that I could not get an opportunity. Please 
pardon me." 

11 Oh, that is all right, Major Pond ; sit down 
and have some supper." 

During the conversation at the table he 
said : " Miss Cushman, that one thousand dol- 
lar check of this evening is the interest on 
twenty dollars that you invested in me 
in 1857." Then he related the incident of the 
twenty-dollar gold piece that she gave him 
when he was sick in St. Louis. 

"Are you that boy?" she asked, with a 
reminiscent smile. 

"Yes," said he, smiling back, "the very 
boy." 

" Well, I'm glad to see you. I have often 
wondered if you survived." And the major 
adds, when he tells the story, " We were both 
glad." 

Many a distinguished public man has owed 
the great honors that have come to him in busi- 
ness or political life to some act of knightly 
generosity and unselfishness which has unveiled 
the nobility of his nature to his fellow men, 



BE A UTY OF KNIGHTL Y GENEROSITY 4 1 

and has won their undying admiration and 
love. 1 

Colonel Richard J. Hinton tells the story of 
an election-day conversation which he once 
had in Virginia City, Nevada. The result of 
the election meant the victory or defeat of 
John P. Jones, then and now United States 
Senator from that State. The journalist was 
attracted by a witty Irishman, and entering 
into a conversation with him, finally asked 
why he, a Democrat, should be so fast a 
friend of a rigid Republican, such as Senator 
Jones then was. 

"Sure," said the miner, in reply, "why 
shouldn't I work for the man who saved my 
life? There's never a mining man in Nevada 
old enough to remember but what votes for 
John P. just as long as he wants a vote. It's 
not politics, sir, it's pure love of the man. 
How was it ? Well, he came here first as super- 
intendent of Crown Point and Kaintuck mines. 
It was him that originated eight hour shifts — 
three tricks for the men in each twenty-four. 

" But that's not what did it. One day the 
alarm was raised of fire in the Kaintuck, on the 



42 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

one thousand foot level. You know, sir, how 
cuts, drifts, and levels are shored-up ; there's 
wood enough down in the Comstock to build 
another place like 'Frisco. Now, a fire is a 
serious thing, especially if it gets into the 
metal — the ore veins, I mean. The flame 
decomposes them very rapidly, and the galler- 
ies fill with poisonous gases. It was soon 
seen that this fire meant business. 

M The first man to enter the cage was Super- 
intendent Jones. Other men went down with 
him. The cage works by hydraulic pressure, 
and there was the danger, soon seen, that the 
flames might reach the pipes and prevent its 
working. The Senator is a big, broad-shoul- 
dered and deep-chested man. He has a clear 
head, sure, and no better miner is there alive 
than he. There were a lot of men down be- 
low when the alarm came, but they all soon 
got up — all but nineteen, and I was one of 
them, foreman of the gang farthest away from 
the shaft and nearest to the fire. It got hold 
of the timbers, and in the driest of the levels. 
We fought our way to air. With several oth- 
ers I was soon overcome. Then the timbers 



BE A UTY OF KNIGHTL Y GENEROSITY 43 

behind us began to fall in and the caving 
in of the roof increased the gas. The last I 
remember distinctly was Jones' cheery voice 
shouting to us to keep up our courage. 

" It was a long day and a night. The cage 
was fortunately able to run. Man after man 
among the rescuers became affected by the 
fumes, but the superintendent remained active 
and untiring. He helped to drag out and send 
up the men who were overcome, and the men 
also that were rescued. Timbers were cut 
away, Jones at the front always — every man 
swears to that. Air was pumped in, and step 
by step the rescue party got eighteen out of 
the most dangerous places. I was one of the 
last. 

M Finally there was only one man left, and 
it was declared that life would be sacrificed in 
any effort to rescue him. Jones stepped into 
the cage ; the man who ran it had been over- 
come by the gas and could not work. A vol- 
unteer was called for. None of the men 
responded. At last a boy of sixteen got in. 
The Senator hesitated, but as there was no 
one else, down they went. At the mouth of 



44 TWENTIE TH VENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

the shaft there was agony ; but at last the bell 
was heard, and up shot the cage, the gas 
fumes behind it, and the smell of fire close to 
the works. It came swiftly ; and when eager 
hands clutched at the door the boy lay hud- 
dled up ; and the superintendent, scorched by 
the flame and gasping for breath, holding the 
limp figure of the man by one arm as he 
worked the elevator cable by the other hand, 
stumbled out and fell prone on the shaft- 
house floor. The boy was pulled out quickly, 
and only just in time, for the cage fell quite a 
distance. A few minutes later and all three 
would have died. 

" The man recovered and the boy was soon 
about. But the Senator felt the effects long 
after. Don't you think we're all right in being 
willing to give him a senatorship, if we have 
the chance, for every one of them nineteen 
lives he saved? " 

Thus it comes about that John P. Jones has 
sat in the United States Senate for over 
twenty-six years, and will be there for thirty 
if he lives to fill his term. 
i Christianity lays great stress on this grace 



BE A UTY OF KNIGHTL Y GENER OS I TY 4 5 

of generosity and unselfishness. Jesus Christ 
lived it before the world. He was unselfish- 
ness incarnated in humanity. He was never 
thinking about his own pleasure or comfort. 
He was always seeking to so use his strength 
and his wisdom that it would prove a blessing 
to some one who was in a hard place. Christ 
cared for the souls of men, but also no per- 
sonal sacrifice was too great if he could bring 
comfort to them in their sickness, or poverty, 
or need, while in the body. Too many people 
wait until after their neighbors are dead before 
they speak the generous and appreciative 
words that would have meant so much to the 
living. 

On the top of the beautiful Apennines, near 
Florence, has been recently unveiled a marble 
tablet in memory of Count Telfener. He was 
born in Italy, but came to Texas when very 
young, and made a great fortune in building 
railways. He returned home to Italy with 
his head full of projects for the benefit of his 
country. He built himself a beautiful villa 
just outside the gates of Rome, and intended 
to spend his vast wealth for the good of that 



46 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

city. But his good intentions were misunder- 
stood and the people began to criticise him. 
Some people could not endure the sight of 
him because his mother's diamonds were too 
big. Others objected to the cut of his coat, 
and still others found fault with the way he 
wore his hair. Finally the general dislike cul- 
minated in the annulling of his election to 
Parliament without the shadow of a reason. 
He disappeared from Rome, and the next 
heard from him was that he had built the rail- 
way which revealed the beauties of the Central 
Apennines to travelers, conferring untold 
riches and benefit on the whole district. Now 
that he is dead, cabinet ministers, senators, 
and princes gather to unveil this tablet, ren- 
dering him honors one-fifth of which would 
have made his misunderstood life radiantly 
happy. 

The man who lives in the spirit of knightly 
generosity taught and illustrated by Jesus 
Christ will not make that mistake, for the un- 
selfishness of his great Captain will pervade 
his own heart, and rule his conduct toward his 
fellow men. \ 



IV 
THE LOYALTY OF A NOBLE SOUL 

One of the noblest developments of chivalry 
was the training of a class of men who held 
themselves in honor bound loyally to keep 
their engagements with their fellow knights. 
The fraternities of arms were outgrowths of 
these loyal friendships and fellowships of the 
knights. Many examples are cited where two 
knights would cause themselves to be bled at 
the same time, that their blood might be 
mingled together. If this practice seems bar- 
barous to us, it is well to remember that 
nothing was more opposite to barbarity than 
the sentiment it inspired, which was that of 
genuine loyalty and devotion. 

Besides other ceremonies, loyal companions 
in arms sometimes exchanged their weapons 
with one another as a bond of love ; as Homer 
describes in the case of Glaucus and Diomede. 
The engagement then reciprocally taken con- 
sisted in each never abandoning his companion 
in whatever situation he should be; to aid 



48 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

him with person and property to the hour of 
death ; and even to maintain for him, in cer- 
tain cases, the challenge of battle if he died 
before he had accomplished it. The brother 
in arms was to be the enemy of those who 
were enemies of his brother, and the friend of 
all those who were friends to him ; both of 
them were to divide their present and future 
wealth, and employ both that and their lives 
for the deliverance of each other if taken 
prisoner. ( These loyal friends often wore the 
same clothing and armor; they wished the 
enemy to mistake them for each other, and to 
run an equal risk of those dangers with which 
each might be threatened. Charles VIII., at 
the battle of Fornovo, chose nine of his brav- 
est officers, and gave each of them a complete 
armor exactly the same as his own. He de- 
ceived by this stratagem a troop of enemies, 
who, being leagued together to kill him, 
sought him through all the ranks, and thought 
themselves assured of him whenever they met 
any one of these nine brave nobles. The 
honor that came to these illustrious warriors 
by this choice was the more signal as it en- 



THE LOYALTY OF A NOBLE SOUL 49 

gaged them in a fraternity of arms with their 
sovereign. That they should have hailed such 
a dangerous honor with delight and devotion 
is a graphic illustration of their courage, as 
well as their loyalty./ 

(Kw interesting story is told, that on one 
occasion, when war had broken out between 
England and Spain, the Prince of Wales com- 
manded all the English who had been in the 
service of Henry of Castile to quit their Span- 
ish master and return to him. Hue de Car- 
valai, who was of the number, being forced to 
separate from his friend at arms, Boucicaut, 
came to take his leave of him. ' ' Gentle lord, " 
said he, u we must now part; we, who have 
been together in happy companionship ; have 
had the same will, the same conquest, and the 
same joys; nor has either received a joy that 
the other has not partaken of. But, in ac- 
count, I think I have received more from you 
than I have dispensed ; therefore I pray you 
that we may settle; and what I owe you, I 
will payor assign over to you." 

"This is a sermon indeed! " said Bertrand 
Boucicaut. " I have never thought of this ac- 



5 O TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

count ; nor know I whether you are indebted 
to me or I to you ; but I pray you, as we are 
to separate, let us be quit herein. But if we 
meet again we will make a new debt, and will 
have it written ; it now only remains for each 
of us to act nobly and for you to follow your 
master. May that affection which hath ever 
been continue with us; and, since it must be 
so, in love let us depart ! " 

They then kissed each other and separated, 
bearing eternal loyalty in their hearts tho they 
must for the time be in different armies be- 
cause of the supreme loyalty which each owed 
his prince, j 

C Loyalty to one's duty is always noble and 
chivalrous, no matter how lowly one's work 
may be. Some one has well said that the 
glory of a life is in the quantity of devoted- 
ness to God and in the fidelity with which the 
simplest thing is done — in the quantity of 
the higher life that can be thrown into the 
lowliest duty or the humblest position. \ 

4 i What were you doing while Schley was 
pulverizing Cervera? M demanded a by-stander 
at the wharf in New York of a sooty-looking 



THE LOYALTY OF A NOBLE SOUL 5 I 

man leaning over the rail of the battleship 
Texas. 

u Shoveling coal down yonder, " was the 
sententious reply, accompanied by a jerk of 
the elbow toward the lower regions of the 
ship. But everybody knows that it was the 
knightly loyalty of the coal shovelers and en- 
gineers down in the smothering and sweltering 
furnace rooms that made the victory possible. 

Mark Guy Pearce happened once to be 
seated in a railway train when a train in- 
spector passed with a very pretty flower in his 
buttonhole. Presently there came along a big 
drunken brute of a fellow, and as he went by 
the inspector be snatched out the flower and 
in a most insulting manner flung it under the 
train. Mr. Pearce watched the inspector's 
face flush and his fist clinch, but after a mo- 
ment's pause he turned about with an effort, 
and went on his way. As he passed the door 
of his carriage Mr. Pearce said: " You took 
that splendidly! " The inspector nodded his 
head and replied: "If I had not been on 
duty, sir, I would have knocked his head off! " 
And that struck Mr. Pearce as a very signifi- 



5 2 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

cant statement, indicating the power of loyalty 
to duty jn the higher realm of life. 

It is the supreme power of Christianity that 
it puts into a man a noble loyalty to Christ 
and to duty that beats back and restrains the 
angry promptings of the heart. In Christian 
chivalry the true knight of Jesus Christ is al- 
ways on duty. He carries the glory and honor 
of his Lord. As the officers of Charles VIII. 
wore an armor exactly like their king, and 
were mistaken for him and represented him in 
battle, so every young man who has sworn 
allegiance to Christ is set apart to represent 
him in the shop, in the store, in the social 
circle, in politics, and must see to it that 
the honor of Christ does not suffer at his 
hands. 

This supreme loyalty to Christ will check the 
hungry over-eagerness of life, and that keen 
and cruel competition out of which so much of 
the evil of our time has come ; it will destroy 
envy and covetousness and the scornfulness of 
pride. And surely that is what every true and 
noble man wants — such a loyalty in his nature 
to the highest things that he shall be held al- 



THE LOYALTY OF A NOBLE SOUL 53 

ways at his best, ready for service, rich to help, 
a tree that is always in leaf and always in 
bloom, and always laden with its fruit, like the 
orange trees of southern California, where the 
beauty of the blossom hangs on the same 
branch mingling its fragrance with the mellow 
glory of the ripened fruit. 

The world sneeringly makes its proverbs 
and declares that " every man has his price," 
but there is a loyalty that is unpurchasable. 
It can die, but it will never prove treacherous 
to itself. Dr. Clay Trumbull, in his "War 
Memoirs of a Chaplain/* tells an interesting 
story of that kind of loyalty : At the close of 
the Civil War Dr. Trumbull fell in with a Vir- 
ginia plantation owner near the field of Me- 
chanicsville, where General McClellan fought 
one of his severe battles in the summer of 
1862. This man said that he went out to the 
field after the Northern troops had retired 
from it. He noticed a little fellow lying 
wounded in the hot sun. As he looked pity- 
ingly at him the boy gained courage to make 
a request: "Neighbor, won't you get me a 
drink of water? I am very thirsty/ ' 



5 4 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

"Of course I will," said the man, and he 
brought the water. 

Encouraged by this, the little fellow asked 
again: "Won't you get me taken to the 
hospital? I am badly wounded." 

The old planter said : "Well, now, my boy, 
if I get you taken care of, and you get well so 
that you can go home again, will you come 
down here and fight me and my folks once 
more? How about that? " 

It was a hard test for a wounded prisoner 
boy, but that boy stood the test. Looking 
his captor in the eye, he said, firmly: " That 
I would, my friend. " 

" I tell you," said the planter, " I liked that 
pluck. I had that boy taken to the hospital 
and good care taken of him." 

That is the sort of loyalty, wherever you 
find it, which lifts a man up into the spirit of 
chivalry. Frederick W. Robertson says that 
it is no doubt heroic to stand with a smile 
upon your face against a stake to which you 
are chained and from which you cannot get 
away. But the highest glory is not resigna- 
tion to the inevitable. To stand unchained, 



THE LOYALTY OF A NOBLE SOUL 55 

with perfect liberty to go away, held only by 
the higher chains of duty, and let the fire 
creep up to the heart — that is heroism. 

From the very nature of the case Christian- 
ity has aroused the most chivalric loyalty that 
has been known in our time. Ingersoll used 
to say that a man was a fool who would die 
for a principle or a cause. And one can easily 
see that supreme loyalty never can be ex- 
pected from a man who regards himself only 
as a higher order of beast, who is to make 
himself sleek and fat like the ox and to-morrow 
is to die and go into nothingness. 

A clergyman and an atheist were in one of 
the night trains, not long ago, on the New 
York Central road between Albany and Utica. 
A discussion was awakened between the two 
as to a man's condition after death. The 
atheist asserted in loud, defiant tones, "Man 
is like a pig ; when he dies that is the end of 
it." 

As the minister was about to reply, a 
wholesome looking Irish woman down the car 
sprang up, the natural red of her face glowing 
more intensely with animation, and, address- 



5 6 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

ing the clergyman in a voice peculiarly startling 
and humorous from its impassioned tone and 
the richness of its brogue, exclaimed : "Arrah, 
now, will ye not let the baste alone? Has he 
not said that he was a pig? And the more ye 
pull his tail the louder he'll squale ! " 

You may expect a greedy, selfish looking 
out for number one, and the utter absence of 
noble loyalty, on the part of a man who 
believes he is only a pig. For that supreme 
loyalty of nature which lifts man above the 
beasts that perish, and makes him willing to 
live, and suffer, and die with all gladness for 
the holy cause to which he has sworn alle- 
giance, you must look to those who take not 
only the present, but the future, into their 
calculations. 

I should be exceedingly happy if I thought 
I should make one young man who hears me 
to-day ambitious to join the order of Christian 
knights who give themselves up with unflinch- 
ing loyalty and fidelity to every good cause that 
they espouse. The Scripture declares that 
the unstable man will never amount to any- 
thing, that even God is not able to help a man 



THE LOYALTY OF A NOBLE SOUL $? 

who is " unstable as water." Buxton said 
that the longer he lived the more certain he 
became that the great difference between men, 
between the feeble and the powerful, is this 
spirit of loyalty. Invincible determination, a 
purpose once fixed, and then death or victory ! 
That quality will do anything that can be 
done in this world, and no talents, no circum- 
stances, no opportunities, will make a two- 
legged creature a man without it. 
** ( How this splendid Christian loyalty stands 

out in the life of Paul ! Coming toward the 
end of his wonderful career he shouts, like the 
brave soldier he was, " Our light affliction, 
which is but for a moment, worketh for us a 
far more exceeding and eternal weight of 
glory." And what were the light afflictions 
which Paul makes little of under the influence 
of his happy loyalty to Christ? Dr. Hillis in 
a recent review of Paul's unique career says 
that when the scarred hero passed in review 
the events of his life it was a long series of 
thrilling adventures, any one of which would 
have been considered enough to make another 
man immortal. Other men have known one 



5 8 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

peril, or two. Livingstone was thrown down 
in the jungle by a lion and looked into the 
face of the beast which was mangling his arm ; 
Paton faced the»cannibals of the New Hebrides, 
who placed their poisoned spears against his 
breast; Judson in Burmah was chained in one 
corner of a cage while a tiger in another corner 
snarled at his fellow captive ; Polycarp found 
himself surrounded by a circle of fagots; 
John was exiled to a bare rock in the sea and 
left to die in loneliness and desolation ; Mat- 
thew was trampled to death by the mob in a 
city of the Nile; James was. hurled from the 
top of a wall in Jerusalem; but the sufferings 
that were divided among this heroic band 
were all gathered up and focalized upon the 
body of that single man named Paul. He 
says of himself, "In stripes above measure, 
in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of 
the Jews five times received I forty stripes 
save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, 
once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, 
a night and a day I have been in the deep ; in 
journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils 
of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, 



THE LOYALTY OF A NOBLE SOUL 59 

in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, 
in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the 
sea, in perils among false brethren ; in weari- 
ness and painfulness, in watchings often, in 
hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold 
and nakedness." And yet Paul brushed all 
these things aside with a courageous laugh 
because of his supreme loyalty to Jesus 
Christ. 

In calling you to this noble loyalty of nature 
and character I am calling you not only to the 
noblest but to the happiest life that any man 
can ever know. 

"" One of the pages in the Senate at Washing- 
ton was approached at one of the Senate en- 
trances by a lady with a visiting card in her 
hand. 

" Will you hand this to Senator Blank? " 
she said. 

"I cannot," replied the boy. "All cards 
must be taken to the East Lobby." 

The woman was inclined to be angry, and 
went away muttering. Then, as if a new 
thought had just struck her, she stopped, and, 
taking out her pocketbook, she found a quar- 



60 T WEN TIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

ter of a dollar. With it in her hand, she 
went back to the boy. 

" Here, my lad," she said, in a coaxing 
tone, " here is a quarter to take my card in." 

" Madam," said the bright boy, without a 
moment's hesitation, ' ' I am paid a larger salary 
than that to keep cards out." 

You may be sure that when the devil offers 
you a bribe to break down your loyalty to 
God and your own best nature, that there is a 
higher salary, there is greater happiness, there 
is nobler reward, attached to loyalty to that 
which is holiest and best. 



THE WHITE LIFE OF PURE MAN- 
HOOD 

The preliminary ceremonies which prepared 
the knight for the sacred sword of chivalry 
suggest the pure life he was expected to lead. 
He endured austere fasts; whole nights were 
passed in prayers with a priest and godfather 
in the church or chapel ; the sacraments of pen- 
ance, confession, and of the eucharist were re- 
ceived with the utmost devotion. The knight 
was bathed to signify the purity of manners 
necessary in the state of chivalry, and was 
clothed in white, in imitation of the neophytes, 
or new converts, as another symbol of the same 
purity. He made publicly a sincere acknowl- 
edgment of all the faults of his life ; and gave 
serious attention to sermons in which were ex- 
plained the principal articles of faith and of 
Christian morals. All these duties of prepara- 
tion had to be performed, in the most devout 
manner, by the young candidate for knight- 
hood, previous to his being armed. 



62 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

An ancient record giving the order of chiv- 
alry says: When the good knight receives 
the naked sword, he kisses the cross as he re- 
ceives it; by some this is done at the Holy 
Sepulcher, for the love and honor of our Lord ; 
by others, at the tomb of Saint Catharine, or 
other holy places of devotion. The young 
man then bathes ; after which, clothed in 
white apparel, he is to watch all night in the 
church and remain there in prayer till after the 
celebration of high mass. The communion 
being then received, the young man, with his 
hands joined and held up towards heaven, to 
which also his eyes were solemnly directed, 
after the priest celebrating mass had passed 
the sword over his neck and blessed it, went 
and knelt at the feet of the lord who was to 
arm him. The lord asked him with what in- 
tent he desired to enter into that sacred order, 
and if his views tended only to the mainte- 
nance and the honor of religion and of knight- 
hood. The young man made a suitable re- 
ply; and the lord, after having received his 
oath, dubbed him a knight by three strokes on 
the neck with the flat end of the sword, and 



THE WHITE LIFE OF PURE MANHOOD 63 

girded on him the golden sword. This august 
scene passed sometimes in a hall, or in the 
court of a palace or a castle, or, in time of 
war, in the open field. 

The desire of riches, of repose, and of being 
honored, were esteemed not only insufficient 
but unworthy motives for entering into the 
sacred order of knighthood. The squire who 
was vainglorious, or a flatterer, was also ex- 
cluded ; for such foment those corruptions 
which the knight was engaged to root out and 
destroy. 

I King Peleon, when he armed his sons and 
(nephews knights, declared to them that who- 
ever would enter into the sacred order of 
knighthood ought first to purge his conscience 
and cleanse his heart from every vice, fill and 
adorn it with every virtue, and charge him- 
self with the greatest care to accomplish every- 
thing he is commanded to do in the profession 
he takes upon him. In one word, he should 
be without reproach. \ 

Chivalry reached its highest point of nobility 
in its attitude toward womanhood. Independ- 
ent of the defense of religion, its temples and 



64 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

its ministers, to which the knights devoted even 
life itself, the other laws of chivalry contained 
in the oath of reception might have been 
adopted by the wisest legislators and the 
greatest philosophers of every age and nation. 
In virtue of these laws, widows, orphans, and 
all those of either sex that were powerless, ill 
at ease, and groaning under oppression and 
injustice, had a right to claim the protection 
of a knight, and to exact for their defense 
not only the succor of his arm but the sacrifice 
of his life. And to shrink from his obligation 
was to fail in paying the most sacred debt and 
to incur dishonor for the rest of his days. 

Of all the laws of chivalry, none were main- 
tained with such vigor as those having regard 
to women ; they had peculiar privileges granted 
them. Without arms to maintain themselves 
in the possession of their estates, destitute of 
the means to prove their innocence if attacked, 
they would have been often the distressed wit- 
nesses of their fortune and their lands becom- 
ing the prey of a neighboring unjust and tyran- 
nical lord, or of their reputation sinking under 
the load of calumny, if the knights had not 



THE WHITE LIFE OF PURE MANHOOD 65 

been always ready to arm in their defense. It 
was even a capital point of their institution 
never to carelessly censure a lady themselves, 
nor to suffer any to be guilty of such an offense 
in their presence. 
J / I have called attention thus at length to 
the honor put on purity of heart and conduct 
in the age of chivalry, as a foundation for a 
most earnest appeal to young men to appre- 
ciate the seriousness and importance of the 
subject. No man can ever live a strong and 
finally victorious life who is not pure in his 
heart and thought, and true in his ideals of 
what a man ought to be. "V 

A traveler having occasion to journey along 
the Rhode Island State line, recently, was 
shown a large clump of forest trees, just with- 
in the border of that little commonwealth, 
which was literally blackened with fish-hawks* 
nests. The farmer who was with him told 
him that the reason lay in the fact that Rhode 
Island alone, of all the New England States, 
protected the lives of these hawks. The 
hawks have found this out, and all up and 
down the line between Connecticut and Rhode 



66 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

Island are to be seen the results of this pro- 
tection by one State and war on the part of 
the other. On the Connecticut side of the 
fence for miles and miles scarcely a nest of 
this great bird is ever found, while in Rhode 
Island the nests are everywhere, even in the 
tops of the chimneys of abandoned houses. 
So far as known there is only one pair of fish- 
hawks which nest in southeastern Connecticut, 
and they have taken possession of an inac- 
cessible pine tree in a great swamp ; but on 
the Rhode Island side of the line the birds are 
as tame as are the storks in Holland. 

The difference in men's hearts and lives is 
like that. If you give nesting room to evil 
thoughts and impure and lustful desires in 
your imagination, you may depend upon it 
that these filthy birds of unholy purpose will 
come to abound in your life. A friend of 
mine once went to see a young man who was 
very ill and who could only live for a little 
while, and was very much shocked to hear 
from him while in that condition vulgar and 
filthy oaths, and remarks which were sug- 
gestive of a very low and unclean mind. He 



THE WHITE LIFE OF PURE MANHOOD 6/ 

finally spoke to him about it in a kind way, 
and said to him that it must be very uncom- 
fortable to have such thoughts as that in his 
mind, and related that once in his own youth, 
when he was but a boy, he had fallen in with 
bad company, and had a touch of that sort 
of thing for awhile, and that it had filled him 
with shame and discomfort ; but that he was 
very grateful that for many years he had kept 
his mind and heart pure from such evil imag- 
inations. And this poor fellow, weak and frail 
in his sickness, looked up at my friend with 
haggard, burning eyes and said, " What do 
you think of me? I live in such thoughts all 
the time. I just wallow in the hell of them 
all the while! " What a picture that is of the 
danger and peril of harboring and giving breed- 
ing room for the revel of impure imaginations. 
For just as surely as Connecticut law has ban- 
ished the fisk-hawks and driven them to where 
they are protected, so a manly purpose sup- 
ported by the good sword of the Spirit, and 
the armor of Christian knighthood, can banish 
these devil's fowls from the heart.! H 

A great deal of the literature which we read 



68 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

to-day is utterly false and vicious in its stand- 
ards of manhood. Dr. Clifford of London well 
says that in a world like ours it does not help 
us a jot to read book after book on the hack- 
neyed text enunciated by Becky Sharp, "I 
think I could be a good woman if I had five 
thousand pounds a year." It is a fatal false- 
hood, and more so that it is so pleasant and 
welcome to us. It goes against the doctrine 
taught by that true artist, Shakespeare, when 
he says, "It is not in our stars, but in our- 
selves, that we are underlings." Yet how 
often do we read in modern fiction a dialogue 
like this : — 

"Happiness is the nurse of virtue," said 
Jasper. 

"And independence the root of happiness," 
answers Amy. 

"True. The glorious privilege of being in- 
dependent ! " 

"Yes, Burns understood the matter." 

" Ha! Isn't the world a glorious place! " 

" For rich people." 

"Yes; for rich people. How I pity the 
poor devils." 



THE WHITE LIFE OF PURE MANHOOD 69 

And so the insinuation is thrown out that 
the condition makes the man. The teaching 
is that money in abundance is the perennial 
fountain of virtue ; that noble character 
springs naturally from an atmosphere sound- 
ing with the clink of coin and flavored with 
the polite nothings of fashionable society. 
Now all such teachings are lies, plain and sim- 
ple. But they are very insidious and devas- 
tating lies. 

And, as Dr. Clifford well says, such teach- 
ing is as destructive of morality as it is false to 
the facts of life. It leads to hatred of chil- 
dren because of the trouble they bring. It 
suggests to men and women that if they only 
isolate or prevent the physical penalties of 
their acts they have ended all ; forgetting the 
hardening of character, the slackening of moral 
fiber, the deterioration at the center of the 
soul, the actual rotting of human life. It fos- 
ters greed of wealth, luxuriousness of living, 
waste of life. It blinds men to the gravity 
and seriousness of existence ; ignores our high 
destiny and capabilities, puts the animal be- 
fore the spiritual, and makes us the victims of 



JO TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

an entirely superficial conception of life. Un- 
der the influence of these dazzling falsehoods 
men come to believe that it is the way of the 
good man that is hard and not the way of the 
transgressor, and that it is only by breaking 
the commandments that one may find peace 
to warring passions. But God's word is true, 
and every day of human life bears it out, that 
no manhood is built up securely that is not 
founded on the white principles of a pure life. 

Jesus Christ is the one true standard for a 
noble manhood. You cannot call your life 
white until you bring it and lay it alongside 
of his. 

A standard is a matter of the highest im- 
portance. Did you ever pick up a common 
yardstick in your hand and consider how many 
years of study and experiments were necessary 
to secure the standard yard measure? Bird, 
a famous scientist, made the first standard 
yard in 1760, but the English government did 
not legalize it until 1824. Ten years after- 
ward, when the House of Parliament in Lon- 
don was destroyed by fire, the standard yard 
vas lost, and England was again without a 



THE WHITE LIFE OF PURE MANHOOD 7 I 

standard yard of length. Sheepshanks next 
made a standard yard measure, which the 
English government adopted, and, so that it 
could not be again destroyed by fire, four 
authorized copies were made of it. One of 
these was deposited in the Royal Mint, an- 
other in the Royal Society, another in the 
Observatory in Greenwich, and the fourth was 
embedded in the walls of the new House of 
Parliament. Our own yard measure in this 
country was copied from the English original. 
The cost of the construction of the original 
standard yard measure involved the labor of 
Bird and his assistants for nearly six years. 
Sheepshanks was eleven years in producing 
the accurate copies which he made from Bird's 
original measurements. All that to get a 
yardstick, because the safety of property and 
regularity in the holding of land depended 
on it. 

But the standard of manhood. There is 
only one yardstick for human life, one yard- 
stick for manhood, and that is Jesus Christ. 
Any man that starts out with a lower ideal 
will fail. And the most sublime promise ever 



72 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

given to men is the assurance that if we take 
him for our ideal, and devotedly follow that 
ideal with faith in God, we shall finally see 
Christ as he is, for " We shall be like him." J 

Every man who holds himself loyal to the 
best things in manhood needs to emphasize in 
his own thought and purpose a chivalrous 
attitude towards women. The knight of the 
twentieth century should regard himself as his 
sisters keeper, and that his sister is every 
woman God has made ; that even in the ruined 
and wandering one there is a precious soul, 
which his generous and loyal manhood stand- 
ing firm and strong may save. 

A noble young woman was once conversing 
with her younger brother, who was speaking 
lightly of a girl friend. She exclaimed, " Oh, 
Benjie, you hurt me ! M 

"You, Sis! Why, what have you to do 
with it? You're all right ! " 

u But you, Benjie? You, my knight, with- 
out fear, and without reproach ! I cannot 
bear to think that a thoughtless girl's unhappy 
blunders make mirth for you. When you are 
not true and knightly to all women, you are 



THE WHITE LIFE OF PURE MANHOOD 73 

not true to mother and me. Every time you 
help a sister woman to be truer and better, 
you are paying tribute to mother and me. 
Every time you fail in this, you cast reproach 
on us, whose part it has been to teach you 
how to regard women and how to treat them. 
Every wayward girl is a wound to woman- 
hood ; and every man who helps a girl to be 
wayward wounds his sister and his mother." 

I entreat you not to think that I am talking 
of impossible and impracticable things when I 
appeal for this white life, a life as white and 
clean in a man as he desires in a woman. I 
am sure that nothing is so despoiling the man- 
hood of our time as the leprous and blighting 
hand of lust. Nothing makes the inner soul 
so unclean; nothing so hardens the heart 
against God ; nothing so deafens the ear to 
the voice that would teach it spiritual things \ 
nothing so saturates the imagination with 
poisonous impulse as unmanly and unholy 
dealing with womanhood. The burned and 
despoiled wreckage of lust is upon every 
hand. 

Mr. A. R. Watson, an English traveler, 



74 TWENTIE TH CENTUR V KNIGHTHOOD 

has just had one of the most thrilling expe- 
riences that ever befell a mountaineer. He 
ascended to Mauna Loa volcano, in the Ha- 
waiian Islands, while it was in a state of furi- 
ous eruption. Mr. Watson became separated 
from his companions and guides in making 
some explorations on his own account. He 
came around the side of the mountain to 
where a great river of lava was bounding in a 
straight line down the mountain side, while 
about eight hundred feet above, on the slope 
of the hill, the crater, like the mouth of some 
infernal monster, was pouring forth melted 
stone. 

Mr. Watson sat for a considerable time, 
probably a couple of hours, gazing upon that 
strange river of rolling, flowing, bursting fire 
rushing down the side of the mountain. Some 
thousand or more feet below, this stream en- 
tered a thicket of trees, which, Mr. Watson 
observed through his glass, seemed to have 
wonderful powers of resisting the attack of 
the flames. 

Toward night he arose from his seat below 
the rocks, intending to go over the summit, 



THE WHITE LIFE OF PURE MANHOOD 75 

down the hill, and walk out between the lava 
on the side which he was to cross. But he 
suddenly noticed that whichever way he looked 
he could see a stream of lava. He thought 
his eyes had been resting too long on running 
lava and that it was only an illusion, and so 
went forward. But he had not been mistaken. 
While he had been sitting with his back to the 
direction from which he had come, and in 
which he must go, with his eyes on the flow- 
ing stream, enchanted with its marvels, there 
had broken from the lower edge of the crater 
a second flow. He started on down and had 
proceeded several hundred feet when, to his 
horror and amazement, he discovered that the 
new stream of lava ran directly into the earlier 
stream. The streams joined, and his retreat 
had been cut off. He was hemmed in by 
running rivers of fire. 

As he meditated on the best means of es- 
cape his eye fell on the singular forest at the 
bottom of the incline, and he thought of the 
heat-defying properties of that wood. If he 
could only turn the bunch which grew above 
him into service. Ah! he had it — stilts! He 



j6 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

had been an expert on stilts when a boy, and 
felt certain his skill had not forsaken him. 
Drawing a stout-bladed knife from his pocket, 
he began hewing at the base of one of the 
smallest trees. The wood was of the species 
known as ironwood. When the blade grew 
dull he whetted it on the rocks. All through 
the night he worked, while the terrible furnace 
belched above him. 

By daylight he had the stilts made, and, 
mounting them, started off to the edge of the 
flow. The wood smoldered but did not blaze 
as he waded through the lava. The heat was 
frightful, blistering his face and hands. As 
he arrived at the opposite edge of the river of 
fire one charred stilt broke off, but eager hands 
grasped him and he swooned in the arms of 
his friends. He was saved ! 

I speak to some of you who are in a peril 
more terrible than that. You are hemmed in 
by streams of influence that are evil and devil- 
ish in their fascination for your soul. Your 
manhood is surrounded by flowing streams of 
fiery lust that threaten to burn to the very 
center all that is pure and holy in your nature. 



THE WHITE LIFE OF PURE MANHOOD ^ 

If you yield to it, if you give up to it, it were 
better for you that you had never been born. 
Do you think I exaggerate? that my illus- 
tration is too strong for the facts? and that a 
young man tempted to soil his pure, white 
manhood by lust is in no such terrible danger 
as I have set forth? Then listen, I pray you, 
not to my word, but to the word of the wisest 
man that ever lived ; a word set down as a 
lighthouse on a dangerous coast, forever send- 
ing out its warning light from God's Book. 
Listen, while I recall it to you : — 

" Say unto wisdom, Thou art my sister ; 

And call understanding thy kinswoman : 

That they may keep thee from the strange woman, 

From the stranger which flattereth with her words. 

For at the window of my house 

I looked forth through my lattice ; 

And I beheld among the simple ones, 

I discerned among the youths, 

A young man void of understanding, 

Passing through the street near her corner, 

And he went the way to her house ; 

In the twilight, in the evening of the day, 

In the blackness of night and the darkness. 

And, behold, there met him a woman 

With the attire of an harlot, and wily of heart 



78 TWENTIE TH CENTUR V KNIGHTHOOD 
And with an impudent face she said unto him : 

^ # •& -K •& •& «5f * * * * * 

Therefore came I forth to meet thee, 

Diligently to seek thy face, and I have found thee. 

I have spread my couch with carpets of tapestry, 

With striped cloths of the yarn of Egypt. 

I have perfumed my bed 

With myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon. 

Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning ; 

Let us solace ourselves with loves. 

■Jf tv w 7? "a* w *Jr "Jf w w w *5£ 

With her much fair speech she causeth him to 

yield, 
With the flattering of her lips she forceth him 

away. 
He goeth after her straightway, 
As an ox goeth to the slaughter, 
Or as fetters to the correction of the fool ; 
Till an arrow strike through his liver ; 
As a bird hasteth to the snare, 
And knoweth not that it is for his life. 
Now, therefore, my sons, hearken unto me, 
And attend to the words of my mouth. 
Let not thine heart decline to her ways, 
Go not astray in her paths. 
For she hath cast down many wounded : 
Yea, all her slain are a mighty host. 
Her house is the way to Sheol, 
Going down to the chambers of death. ' ' 



THE WHITE LIFE OF PURE MANHOOD Jg 

My brother, there is only one pair of stilts 
on which you may walk unscathed through the 
river of fire that is about you. They are the 
stilts of your Christian childhood — the Bible 
and the prayers your mother taught you at 
her knee. By the aid of these alone can you 
walk unblackened the white life of your Cap- 
tain. 



VI 

THE KNIGHTLY REVERENCE OF 
LOFTY CHARACTER 

AFTER David had slain Goliath with the 
smooth stone from his sling, and had climbed 
on the prostrate warrior and cut off his head 
with his own sword, he carried that sword 
away as a most sacred souvenir of the occasion. 
It is certainly suggestive of the lofty character 
of David that he did not retain the sword of 
Goliath as a curiosity about his house, to 
minister to his pride when his friends should 
look at it and praise him for his sublime cour- 
age on the occasion of its capture ; but took it 
to the house of God and left it there in the 
charge of the priests as a token that it was 
through God's grace and strength that he had 
had the power to overcome the giant. It 
was a supreme testimony to the reverence in 
David's character. It indicated his sense of the 
presence of God in the world and his gratitude 
to God for the great deliverance that had been 
wrought through him in the death of Goliath. 



RE VERENCE OF L OFTY CHAR A CTER 8 I 

This same feeling characterized the golden 
age of chivalry. Those who entered upon 
their career with religious ceremonies attend- 
ing their ordination as knights, brought the 
swords by which they had wrought heroic 
deeds, or the swords of their enemies which 
they had captured, and reverently laid them 
on God's altar. Savaron says that in the 
church of St. Catherine de Fierbois were found 
several ancient swords, among which was that 
famous sword, so fatal to the English, the 
sword of Charlemagne, which drove the Eng- 
lish from France, and which was afterwards 
placed among the relics of the church of St. 
Denys. It was agreeable to the piety with 
which the knights entered into this sacred 
character in their first dedication at the altar, 
to place these weapons of honor in the 
churches at the close of life, thus devoting to 
God, the only author of true courage and 
every virtue, the sword they had employed in 
defense of religion and the good of the State. 

Goethe declares that there are three kinds 
of reverence which are essential to the noblest 
manhood — reverence for that which is above 



82 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

us, reverence for what is of the same nature as 
ourselves, and reverence for what is below us. 
That is, reverence for God, a reverence for the 
brotherhood of our fellow men, and a rever- 
ence for the wonderful creatures we behold in 
nature. 

True reverence suggests a keen sense of the 
sacredness of life, that all life is from God and 
is to be regarded reverently. A recent writer 
gives it as a very important part of reverence 
that we should feel the sacredness of all life, 
however lowly, and that no life should be care- 
lessly trodden upon or taken to minister to our 
needs. We are compelled to take life to min- 
ister to our human needs, but it should never 
be done carelessly, or without respect to its 
rights. Every creature has its rights, which 
should under no circumstances be invaded. 
No mere curiosity, no desire for our own pleas- 
ure and amusement, should lead us to violate 
the sanctity of a life that is sacred and beauti- 
ful by the simple fact that it is life. It is for 
our own good, the loyalty and moral health 
of our own souls, that we should hold all life 
sacred, as well as because we would not cause 



RE VERENCE OF L OFTY CHAR A CTER 8 3 

any needless pain. When we cannot respect 
the right of the tiniest creature to live, how 
can we expect that our own rights will be re- 
garded? Indeed, nothing so kills in us what 
is worthiest of growth as the want of reverence 
for those who are less able than we to defend 
themselves. 

The same writer to whom I have referred 
calls attention to the fact that the democratic 
spirit has grown with a rapid pace throughout 
the present century ; and we have come to 
respect, theoretically, the rights of all men, 
women, and children. We are very far, how- 
ever, from having realized what it is to have 
a large and joyous reverence for all human 
beings, to see in even the lowest and most 
degraded the possibilities of a child of God. 
Simple, genuine reverence for man would much 
help us in the solution of our political and our 
social problems ; for it would give us that sen- 
timent of respect and veneration for what is 
manly and womanly which is necessary to any 
moral growth. This man or that may be un- 
worthy ; but we may reverence in him what 
the race has done for him, and the promise it 



84 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

has made for him in the greatness of his inherit- 
ance. He has rights as well as we ; and these 
it is for our good as well as his that we should 
respect and honor. No human being can be 
degraded unjustly, anywhere, without that in- 
justice being made a part of our lives, some- 
where touching us and narrowing the circle of 
our happiness and growth. We cannot rise 
far above our fellows, and must ever feel their 
burdens as our own. Their griefs are a part 
of our limitations, their pain something which 
has been taken out of our own lives. Only as 
reverence for man gains a height above selfish- 
ness and personal self-seeking will mankind 
arrive at what the noblest souls in all ages 
have hoped for and prophesied.* 

This reverence for our fellow men, and for 
the lower forms of life in nature about us, is 
very essential to our manhood, for reve'rence 
for God grows with the growth of other forms 
of reverence. No young man can afford to 
lose reverence of any kind out of his heart, 
for it is a part of the soul's nourishment. 
True reverence is a fertilizer to the very best 
plants that grow in us as men, and if we lose 



RE VERENCE OF L OFTY CHAR A CTER 8 5 

that nourishment the most magnificent blos- 
soms of manhood will fail of coming to their 
best in us. Many a man have you seen with 
strong body, keen mind, good impulses, with 
every opportunity for culture and develop- 
ment, and yet he failed of any high achieve- 
ment, and his life has been frittered away ; in 
early youth his friends had great hopes for 
him, but he was like a wave that is always go- 
ing to break into a white cap, yet never does ; 
he was like a plant that grows hopefully at first, 
but withers before the blossoming time be- 
cause the soil lacks some nourishing quality to 
bring it to perfection. So without reverence 
the human mind and heart make too shallow 
and poor a soil in which to produce the loftiest 
manhood. Nothing can sooner bring famine 
to the inner life, nothing sooner destroy our 
capacity for beautiful living, than to become 
flippant and irreverent. Our capacity for loy- 
alty, our instinct for truth, our passion for 
what is right, our yearning for the truest love 
— indeed, all that makes men heroic and 
noble and lofty of nature depends most of all 
upon this deep spirit of reverence. 



86 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

It has been well said that the wider the 
circle of what we can revere, the greater the 
measure of our own life. As the sentiment of 
reverence grows in us, the richer life becomes, 
the wider the realm of beauty, and the more 
assured the conditions of truth. What we 
cannot respect and admire has for us nothing 
of worth. When we see the beauty, grandeur, 
and sublimity of nature, it becomes to us a 
priceless source of joy and pleasure. When 
we find what there is loving, noble, and self- 
sacrificing in men, humanity becomes to us a 
constant source of help and strength. Then 
we enter into real sympathy with the world 
around us, and we feel the true spirit of 
brotherhood which binds us to all our fellows. 
What we revere is what we love, and is that 
which gives us the grace to live as men. 
Loyalty of soul is greater than knowledge, 
and no gain of wisdom can atone for loss of 
reverence. 

But while it is true that reverence for God 
grows with all kinds of reverence, the other 
side of the shield is also true, that, as we 
recognize clearly God's supreme government 



REVERENCE OF LOFTY CHARACTER 87 

and goodness in the world, it inspires in us 
reverence and regard for all other forms of 
life. A man may be a superstitious man and 
be a bad man, but we instinctively feel that 
there is no other such pledge of the goodness 
of a man as the assurance that he is truly and 
genuinely reverent. 
/ A suggestive story is related of Robert Mor- 
rison, the missionary to China. When he was 
set apart for his work, he sailed for New York, 
as no direct route to his destination was then 
available. He stayed for a while at the home 
of a Christian gentleman in New York city. 
He was taken suddenly ill one night, and was 
laid in his host's own chamber, where, in a 
little crib beside the bed, slept a child whom it 
was thought a pity to disturb. On waking in 
the morning she turned to talk as usual to her 
father; but, seeing a stranger in his place, was 
somewhat alarmed. After a moment's pause 
she fixed her intelligent eyes steadily upon 
him and said : ' ' Man, do you pray to God ? " 

"Oh, yes, my dear," said Mr. Morrison, 
"every day; God is my best friend. " 

The answer seemed at once to reassure the 



8 8 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

startled child ; she laid her little head content- 
edly upon her pillow and fell asleep. She was 
not afraid of him if he was reverent toward 
God. 

It is infinitely important that we should 
accustom ourselves to a reverent attitude of 
mind in our daily thinking. It is great folly to 
permit ourselves to get in the habit of speak- 
ing flippantly and with a seeming irreverence 
which may easily grow to be real through the 
aid of the wonderful power of habit. 

In Nashville, Tennessee, the fire depart- 
ment has an engine house located on the east- 
ern side of the Cumberland river. To reach the 
City Hall from this engine house, it is necessary 
to go six blocks west, down Woodland street, 
across the long bridge which spans the Cum- 
berland, and turn into the public square. At 
the first alarm of fire, it is the duty of the East 
Nashville engine to go immediately to the City 
Hall and wait there as a reserve. At a second 
alarm, it goes into action. 

One night the alarm sounded. Quickly the 
horses took their places, the fireman occupy- 
ing his position in the rear of the engine; but 



RE VERENCE OF L OFTY CHAR A CTER 89 

as the horses dashed out at full gallop, the 
driver missed his step and was left behind. 
Down the street the noble team raced at full 
speed, the fireman in the rear blissfully igno- 
rant that no hands were on the reins. Across 
the long bridge, around the curve, and to their 
appointed place in front of the City Hall the 
horses galloped, and there they stopped, to 
await further orders. 

As the belated driver rushed up, breathless, 
to find all was well, he discovered that trunk 
lines of habit could be laid in the body of a 
horse as well as in that of a man. Resting his 
cheek against the faces of his team, he praised 
them and patted them, and was proud to be 
their driver. 

Now it is possible not only to lay these 
trunk lines of habit in a man's body, but in 
his mind and heart ; and habit comes to be the 
friend of duty, and in every emergency of life 
the man who thus gives himself up to a rever- 
ent attitude toward God and toward his fellow 
men may be sure to do the kind and gracious, 
the loyal and the noble, deed. 

In religious matters reverence is the first 



90 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

condition of entering on the genuine Christian 
life. -Reverence is the key to the Bible. God 
cannot make himself known to the flippant 
and irreverent soul unless it changes its atti- 
tude and becomes reverent. When Moses 
would draw near to the burning bush God 
said to him, " Put off thy shoes from off thy 
feet, for the place whereon thou standest is 
holy ground." One of the early Christian 
fathers was asked : " What is the first requi- 
site to the proper interpretation of Scripture ? " 
He answered: " Reverence. " "And what is 
the second ?" " Reverence." "And what the 
third?" "Reverence." Some one has well 
said that Solomon need not have stopped short 
at saying, "The fear of the Lord is the be- 
ginning of wisdom" ; he might also have said, 
" The fear of the Lord is the beginning, mid- 
dle, and end of wisdom." The poet truly 
sings,— 

1 l There is more wisdom in a whispered prayer 
Than in the ancient lore of all the schools ; 
The soul upon its knees holds fast God' s hand. ' > 

While it is true that no man can really un- 
derstand the Bible who does not approach it in 



RE VERENCE OF L OFTY CHA RA C TER 9 I 

a spirit of reverence, it is also true that the 
Bible cannot be read and studied earnestly 
without inspiring ever deeper and holier rever- 
ence in the heart and mind of the student. 
There is perhaps no more notable fact about 
the Bible than that. If you study the Bible 
with alert mind you will find growing within 
yourself a keen sense of the presence of God 
in it. 

The London Daily Telegraph recently told 
the story of a young man employed in a mar- 
ket who purchased at an auction for five shil- 
lings sixpence an old leather trunk containing 
clothing, books, and tools. Among the arti- 
cles was a venerable and much used family 
Bible. A few Sunday evenings afterwards, 
during the man's absence from home, his wife 
commenced reading some of the chapters to 
her two young daughters, and while turning 
over the leaves she came upon several which 
were pasted together. She immediately set 
to work with great care to separate them, and 
when success crowned her efforts the woman 
was intensely surprised to find hidden between 
the gummed pages six five-pound Bank of 



92 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

England notes. They were inclosed in an 
envelope, were very frayed and soiled, and on 
the back of one was written in ink the follow- 
ing remarkable bequest: "I have worked 
very, very hard for this, and, having no rela- 
tives, leave thee, dear reader, whosoever shall 
be the owner of this Holy Book, my lawful 
heir." 

I suppose every one of you would say that 
it was a lucky purchase to get a Bible with a 
hundred and fifty dollars in it for a few shil- 
lings, but if you will take your Bible and 
search it diligently until you find in it the 
genuine gold of reverence, so that your heart 
worships God and reveres his children and 
holds sacred all the work of his hands, you will 
have found in your Bible riches infinitely 
greater than that. 



VII 

TRUTH AND HONOR THE SPURS OF 
KNIGHTHOOD 

No other human law insisted with so much 
force as the law of chivalry on the necessity 
of inviolable adherence to truth and horror of 
deceit and lies. The word or oath of a knight 
was rarely broken, and when it did occur his 
character and position were forfeited. The 
knights taken in war engaged to come, of their 
own accord, to prison whenever it should be 
required ; and on their word of honor they 
were readily allowed liberty for the time they 
asked it. No one doubted their fulfilling their 
engagements as punctually as Regulus fulfilled 
his; or believed that any pain or distress would 
intimidate them where their oath was con- 
cerned. And sovereigns considered themselves 
as strictly bound by the oath of knighthood as 
if they had sworn by their crown, which they 
held indeed from chivalry. The Duke of Bre- 
tagne, having made a treaty of peace with King 
Charles Sixth, swore to the observance of the 



94 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

treaty " by the faith of his body and the loy- 
alty of his knighthood/' 

If this love of truth has not descended to 
our time with all the purity of the golden age 
of knighthood, it at least has served to pro- 
duce such a disdain for those who infringe the 
truth that a lie has always been considered 
the most fatal and irreparable affront an hon- 
orable man could receive. 

Paul in his letter to the Ephesians, when 
speaking of the armor of the Christian knight, 
compares truth to a girdle which is used to 
bind together the forces of life. The love of 
truth is undoubtedly the only solid basis of 
every virtue. A strong manhood can never 
be built up without truthfulness of character 
and a keen sense of personal honor. This 
noble characteristic of a chivalrous manhood 
brings all those who are mastered by it to the 
same high level. They may be rich or poor; 
they may be ignorant or scholarly ; they may 
wear titles or patches ; but, in spite of all the 
false standards of society, they are the real 
gentlemen of every age. 

The story is told of Sir Laurence Alma- 



THE SPURS OF KNIGHTHOOD 95 

Tadema, that when he was knighted a lady 
called on one of his "At Home " days, and 
expressed herself to his lordship as follows: 
"O dear Sir Laurence, I am awfully glad to 
hear of the honor you have received ; I suppose 
now that you have been knighted you'll give 
up painting pictures and live like a gentle- 
man." There are a great many people who 
have a similar idea of a gentleman. But the 
real gentleman, of the old knighthood or the 
new, is not to be judged by his employment, 
but by the personal honor evinced in his char- 
acter and conduct. 

The true knight is too thoroughly genuine 
either to toady before another or to endure 
being patronized. Professor Blackie used to 
form a very picturesque feature in the streets 
of Edinburgh with his long hair falling in pa- 
triarchal ringlets over his shoulders. He very 
much enjoyed telling a certain anecdote on 
himself: One day he was accosted by a 
grimy little bootblack with, "Shine yer boots, 
sir? 

The professor was impressed by the dirt on 
the boy's face. "I don't want a shine, my 



g6 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

lad," said he. " But if you'll go and wash 
your face I'll give you a sixpence." 

"A' richt, sir," was the lad's reply. Then 
he went over to a neighboring fountain and 
made his ablutions. Returning, he held out 
his hand for the money. 

"Well, my lad," said the professor, "you 
have earned your sixpence. Here it is." 

" I dinna want it," returned the boy with a 
lordly air. " Ye can keep it and get yer hair 
cut." 

Truth and honor are such aggressive quali- 
ties that they may well be called the " spurs 
of knighthood." They do not need to ask the 
permission of anybody to live. In the very 
nature of things they must assert themselves 
and always, in the end, be masters of the 
situation. 

Just before the thousands of eager people 
crowded around Admiral Dewey to begin to 
shake hands with him, on the occasion of his 
great reception in Washington City, President 
McKinley made a suggestion: "Don't let 
any man shake hands with you," he said. 
"You shake hands with him." 



THE SPURS OF KXIGHTHOOD 97 

Therein lies the secret of public hand-shak- 
ing. Any man who has ever stood by at a 
public function, and has seen the thousands of 
strong men grip the hand of a public man and 
throw into their grasp all the enthusiasm and 
devotion burning in their hearts, must have 
wondered how a human hand could survive the 
physical pressure. It is only because the pub- 
lic man becomes the aggressive factor and 
shakes the people, instead of letting them 
shake him, that he is able to stand it. Truth 
and honor are the strong masterly elements of 
character that not only take care of them- 
selves, but take care of the man who is their 
servant. 

Building a career on any other basis except 
truth and honor is as great folly as building a 
house upon the sand. When the storm comes 
it is certain to go down. The world is full of 
shams and humbugs, and we are often deceived 
with them for a little while, but in the end the 
cheat is always discovered and receives its 
merited contempt. 

An Irishman had been making his living by 
ditching. He concluded that this sort of work 



98 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

was too hard, and that he would go into some- 
thing easier. He thought he might do well in 
the poultry business. So he got some hens 
and began. In due time a great many chick- 
ens were hatched out and had to be fed. The 
meal began to cost a good sum of money. A 
friend volunteered to give him some advice. 
He told Pat not to feed them on meal alto- 
gether, but to mix sawdust with the meal — a 
little at first. The amount of meal might 
gradually be reduced, and that of the sawdust 
increased, until the chickens would learn to live 
on sawdust altogether. So he began the ex- 
periment. In the course of time his chickens 
were all dead. He did not like to let his 
friend know he had been such a fool, so he 
said nothing. But his friend was anxious to 
know how Pat was getting along in the poultry 
business. So, meeting him one day, he said : 
"Well, Pat, how are your chickens getting 
on?" 

"Oh, foine, foine," said Pat. "The other 
day one of me hens hatched four chickens, and 
three of them had wooden legs, and the other 
was a woodpecker." 



THE SPURS OF KNIGHTHOOD 99 

Pat's fun gets at the heart of the difficulty 
of many people who wonder at the wooden- 
legged and useless results of their work. You 
cannot get fat chickens on sawdust for food. 
And yet you and I know multitudes of men 
who are trying to do it. There is an old law 
of cause and effect which Paul puts in a tre- 
mendously forceful way when he says, " Be 
not deceived ; God is not mocked : for what- 
soever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." 
To build up a strong, sturdy, influential man- 
hood that will command respect and enforce it 
everywhere, you must have truth and honor in 
the foreground and in the background. 
r A suggestive and interesting story has re- 
c ently been circulated concerning a tilt which 
the Rothschilds once had with the Bank of 
England. It seems that Anselm Rothschild 
of Frankfort drew a bill for a large amount on 
Nathan Rothschild of London. The bill was 
sent to the Bank of England for discount, and 
the haughty reply was made by the directors 
of the Bank of England, " We discount our 
own bills only, and not those of private per- 
sons." 



I OO TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

" Private persons ! " exclaimed Nathan 
Rothschild, when the messenger reported to 
him. "Private persons! I will make these 
gentlemen see what sort of private persons we 
are!" 

Three weeks later, he appeared at the bank 
at the opening hour, and, drawing from his 
pocket a five-pound note on the institution, 
said, " I would like gold for this." The teller 
counted out five sovereigns, without remark, 
altho he looked very much surprised that Baron 
Rothschild should personally attend to such a 
trifle. The Baron examined the coins, one 
by one, put them into a little canvas bag, and 
then presented a second note, a third, a fourth, 
a fifth, and so on up to a tenth, a fiftieth, a 
hundredth, and still kept on. Not a piece of 
gold did he accept without first examining it 
carefully, in some instances trying the pieces 
in the balance. u The law gives me the right 
to weigh them/' he said, " and I shall do so as 
a proper precaution whenever I have the least 
doubt about the genuineness or weight of a 
coin." 

When his pocketbook was emptied and his 



THE SPURS OF KNIGHTHOOD 101 

bag filled, he passed them to a clerk, and thus 
continued till the bank closed for the day. No 
one else had been able to do any business at 
that window. He had been busy seven hours 
and changed twenty-one thousand pounds. 
He also had nine employees engaged in the 
same manner, so the house of Rothschild drew 
two hundred and ten thousand pounds from 
the bank that day, and so occupied the tellers 
that nobody else could change a single note. 

The tellers and the directors alike were very 
much amused at this exhibition of pique on 
the part of Baron Rothschild. But they did 
not laugh quite so loudly when they saw him 
return the next day, at the opening of the 
bank, accompanied by his nine clerks, and fol- 
lowed by several drays to carry away the gold. 
Even the faint remnant of their smiles faded 
very suddenly when the prince of financiers 
said, with ironical simplicity : " These gentle- 
men refuse to pay my bills, so I have sworn 
not to keep theirs. I must change them all 
for gold, at their leisure; only I notify them 
that I have enough to employ them for two 
months. " 



1 02 TWENTIE TH CENTUR V KNIGHTHOOD 

" For two months! " thought the directors 
in alarm, as they stared solemnly at one an- 
other. Eleven million pounds in gold was more 
than even the Bank of England ever held at 
any one time. They were wild with appre- 
hension. Something must be done. They at 
once arranged for the insertion of a notice in all 
the leading British papers. The notice printed 
was this : " Henceforth the Bank of England 
will pay Rothschild's bills the same as its own." 

u I thought that, on due reflection, they 
would find a way to accommodate me," was 
Rothschild's only comment; but he did not 
again appear with his nine clerks to change 
five-pound notes. 

Rothschild was able to do that, and bring 
the Bank of England to terms, not only be- 
cause of his great resources, but because of 
the character of the man, of whom nobody 
doubted for a moment that he would do what 
he said he would to the last letter. \\ 

These great principles apply in the smaller 
affairs of life as well as in matters of national 
importance. In the narrow round of ordinary 
clerical or business or professional life there 



THE SPURS OF KNIGHTHOOD 103 

are some things that a man can always risk as 
a good investment, and truth and honor are 
among them. This story is told of a San 
Francisco philanthropist and a doctor who had 
a keen sense of honor: A very wealthy lady 
some years ago developed an insignificant 
wen on her face. In her travels in Europe 
she consulted an eminent surgeon as to its 
removal, and was advised not to have it done. 
An eastern surgeon of equal eminence also de- 
clined to perform the operation. Returning 
to San Francisco, she happened to show it to 
a young physician and surgeon, a straightfor- 
ward, honest practitioner, but unknown out- 
side of his own city. He examined it care- 
fully, and said there would be no trouble 
about it ; it was a simple operation. Dread- 
ing to risk it after such eminent warning, she 
delayed action, but finally asked another ex- 
amination and opinion. The same conclusion 
was reached ; and the operation followed, with 
wholly successful results. 

One day, when the doctor called, his bill 
was asked for. He presented it, fifty dollars 
being the amount. The lady smiled and said, 



104 TWENTIETH CENTURY KNIGHTHOOD 

" Do you consider that a reasonable charge, 
considering my circumstances? " The doctor 
replied: "That is my charge for that opera- 
tion ; your circumstances have nothing to do 
with it/' The lady went to her desk and drew 
a check for five hundred dollars and presented 
it to him. He looked at it and handed it back, 
saying: " I cannot accept this. My charge 
for that operation is fifty dollars." "Very 
well," the lady replied, " keep the check and 
place the balance to my credit." 

Some months afterwards she received a 
lengthy itemized bill, upon which were entered 
charges for treatment of various kinds, ren- 
dered to all sorts of odds and ends of human- 
ity, male and female, black and white, who 
had been healed at her expense. She was so 
delighted at it that she immediately placed 
another check for five hundred dollars to her 
credit on the same terms, and it is now being 
earned in the same way. 

So the young doctor not only gained repu- 
tation, but practice as well, by the honorable 
conduct which revealed the knightly quality 
of the manhood which he possessed. 



VIII 

COMPASSION THE GLORY OF THE 
STRONG 

THE French and the English, without en- 
tering into the debate as to which of these na- 
tions originated chivalry, both used during 
the reign of that institution such humanity 
and faith toward their prisoners that they were 
the firmest supporters of its laws, and perse- 
vered in proving the spirit of them, when 
neighboring nations gave horrid examples of 
barbarity and treachery to their unhappy pris- 
oners. Olivier de la Marche, in his Memoirs, 
gives a pleasing instance of generosity and 
compassion in James de Lalain and Pietois, 
two knights, in 1450, who, in a combat on 
foot, having overthrown each other, were raised 
up again by the assistants and brought to the 
judges, who caused them to embrace, in sign 
of peace; and when Lalain, from modesty, 
would have sent his bracelet to Pietois, ac- 
cording to the convention agreed on for the 
peace, Pietois declared that, "having been 



1 06 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

overthrown as well as Lalain, he considered 
himself as equally obliged to give him his 
bracelet." This new combat of politeness 
ended by saying no more about the bracelet, 
and by accepting from each other a much 
richer gift ; for a strict bond of friendship was 
formed between these generous enemies. And 
these examples of humanity, and the lessons 
of generosity and compassion so often repeated 
in the tournaments, were not forgotten, even 
in the fury of war, and amidst the carnage 
of battle — the knights were as compassionate 
after as inflexible before victory. 

Nothing so becomes a strong man who has 
power in his hands as generous compassion 
toward those who are weak and unable to de- 
fend themselves from him. I was very much 
impressed at having an ex-Confederate officer 
down in Lexington, Kentucky, last summer, 
say to me: " During the war I hated General 
Grant. I had heard a great many stories 
about his cruelty, and thought that he was a 
man who was reckless with the lives of his own 
soldiers, and one who was utterly without 
mercy when it came to dealing with his ene- 



THE GLORY OF THE STRONG 107 

mies. But," said the Confederate, — and tho 
thirty years and more have gone by, the tears 
welled up in his eyes and rolled out on his 
cheeks as he said it, — "when at Appomattox 
Grant handed Lee's sword back to him and 
would not take it, and said the other officers 
could keep their side arms, and that the de- 
feated Confederate soldiers could keep their 
horses to go home to their desolate farms and 
begin the spring plowing, it broke my heart. 
And I have loved General Grant like a brother 
since the hour I read that." 

Yet it is not in the treatment of enemies 
that most strong men have their most knightly 
opportunities for compassion on weakness, but 
rather in those everyday opportunities that 
come to us all to lend a brotherly hand. Henry 
Ward Beecher once said, " As ships meet at 
sea, a moment together, when words of greet- 
ing must be spoken, and then away into the 
deep, so men meet in this world ; and I think 
we should cross no man's path without hailing 
him, and, if he needs, giving him supplies." / 

It always does me good to see the alacrity 
and heartiness with which truckmen help one 



1 08 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

another in the street. I have often stopped 
on the sidewalk to watch it, with a warmer 
heart at the sight, and there has never seemed 
to me to be any distinctions made in putting 
out the helping hands thus offered. It is often 
a scarred and battered truck, and a team that, 
tho well fed and strong, is perhaps not so 
handsome in appearance as might be, which 
gives a lift to some sleek street craft that is 
bright with paint and trimmings; and then 
again it is some man with a big new truck with 
every angle unbroken, with a brass sign plate 
on either side, and with a pair of horses splen- 
did as well as powerful, who helps out the 
man with an outfit that is battered and scarred. 
Whichever way it happens to be, it is always 
a sight to do one good, and it is the way we 
ought to live in this world in our attitude to 
one another. 

This charm of compassion shines out some- 
times in unexpected places. I was traveling 
not long ago on a railway train from New York 
city to Albany, when my attention was called 
to a large, stalwart young man who was clothed 
in the utmost extreme of the fashion. The 



THE GLORY OF THE STRONG IO9 

11 football hair," the big cane, and the fashion- 
able cut of his apparel were so marked that my 
traveling companion, a white-haired old gen- 
tleman of the sweetest spirit, passed an amus- 
ing comment on the apparent specimen of the 
modern dude. 

In the car, just opposite the young man, 
was seated an old lady, evidently in very mod- 
erate circumstances, with a bundle of clothing 
or something of that sort so large and unwieldy 
that she could hardly carry it, and with which 
the brakeman found great fault when she 
brought it into the car. She was a very 
homely, unattractive person, and there was 
nothing about her, except her age and help- 
lessness, that would be likely to arouse one's 
sympathy. 

However, to our great astonishment, when 
the train drew into the station at Albany, 
where all passengers were to change cars, our 
young fashionable across the way bent over 
the old lady in evident sincerity, and, in the 
most polite and kindly manner, begged that 
he might have the privilege of helping her off 
the train with her big bundle. He took the 



I 10 TWENTIETH CENTURY KNIGHTHOOD 

unwieldy load under one of his strong arms 
and then, with as much solicitude as he could 
possibly have shown if she had been his own 
mother, or his sweetheart, he helped her down 
the steps of the car. 

As soon as she reached the ground the old 
lady turned for her bundle, with face and lips 
overflowing with thanks, but the young fellow 
said : " Oh, no ; let me help you across these 
tracks to the waiting room/' And so, still 
carrying her load, he gently piloted her through 
the shifting maze of cars in the big open sta- 
tion to a place of safety. 

As we passed them my white-haired com- 
panion, presuming on his age, could not help 
pausing a moment at the young fellow's 
shoulder and saying to him, in an undertone : 
" Young man, your action has pleased me 
very much indeed. " 

Without taking the slightest offense the big 
fellow looked down into my friend's face with 
an expression as sweet and gentle as a child's, 
and, with the utmost frankness and sincerity, 
said: " We may be old ourselves sometime, 
you know." 



THE GLORY OF THE STRONG 1 1 1 

And just then I noticed, what I had not 
discovered before, a little Christian Endeavor 
badge, and that seemed to me to explain this 
charming goodness. He was a knight of Chris- 
tian chivalry. Having himself experienced 
the mercy and helpfulness of Him who was 
rich, and yet for our sakes became poor, he 
was seeking to share with Christ in bearing the 
burdens of the weak. 

The opposite of this compassion on the 
part of the strong is as painful as such a case 
as the foregoing is encouraging and delightful. 
A lady relates this incident from a recent ex- 
perience on a street car: Before her stood a 
tall, beautiful girl, her mother beside her. 
They looked alike. When the car gave a 
sudden start the mother stretched her hand 
toward her daughter, and the lady was startled 
to hear the girl say, " Don't lean on me!" 
The mother stepped back and felt for the 
strap. Of course we cannot go back into the 
history of the case and tell what a train of 
circumstances or education had brought about 
such an unhappy state of affairs as that. Per- 
haps when the child was weak, and the mother 



1 1 2 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

was strong, she had been harsh to the little 
thing and had said, " Don't lean on me!" 
and, if so, she was only reaping what she had 
sown. But wherever one sees it, for any 
cause, it is an ugly thing. 
, Every young man should have as an ideal 
for himself the noblest and loftiest life possi- 
ble. The Bible ideal of a strong character is 
always one in which strength is clothed upon 
with beauty. This is revealed in many pic- 
tures and figures. Take this from Isaiah : 
"The glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, 
the excellency of Carmel and Sharon, they 
shall see the glory of the Lord, and the excel- 
lency of our God." What a suggestive pic- 
ture of the union of strength and beauty in 
Christian character! In Bible'times the cedar 
of Lebanon was the ideal of strength and 
grandeur. When Ezekiel desired to sketch 
the strongest possible picture in describing the 
Assyrian, he did so in these beautiful words, 
representing a forest of cedar trees in the 
Lebanon mountains: "A cedar in Lebanon 
with fair branches, and with a shadowing 
shroud, and of an high stature; and his top 



THE GLORY OF THE STRONG I I 3 

was among the thick boughs. The waters 
made him great, the deep set him up on high 
with her rivers running round about his plants, 
and sent out her little rivers unto all the trees 
of the field. Therefore his height was exalted 
above all the trees of the field, and his boughs 
were multiplied, and his branches became 
long, because of the multitude of waters, when 
he shot forth. All the fowls of heaven made 
their nests in his boughs, and under his branches 
did all the beasts of the field bring forth their 
young, and under his shadow dwelt all great 
nations. Thus was he fair in his greatness, in 
the length of his branches : for his root was 
by great waters. . . . The fir trees were not 
like his boughs, and the chesnut trees were 
not like his branches ; nor any tree in the gar- 
den of God was like unto him in his beauty."^ 

I always recall this glorious picture of fertil- 
ity and loveliness, this union of strength with 
beauty in service, when I think of Edward 
Everett Hale. In intellectual height and lit- 
erary fame he towers like a giant cedar ; but 
his boughs have never been reserved for his 
own selfish pleasure ; they have been welcome 



1 1 4 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

nesting-places for every weak and feeble life 
that had nowhere else to go. Under his 
branches all sorts and conditions of suffering 
humanity have found a refuge from the storm. 
He has been able to bless the world by his 
Helping Hand Clubs, and such kindred organ- 
izations, born of his tender heart and fertile 
brain, because back of all these schemes he 
is himself a living, breathing, Helping Hand 
Club in his own personality. 

A few years ago a young man who has since 
made a splendid name found himself in Lon- 
don, utterly discouraged, and, so far as he 
could see, stranded for life. There was no 
one to whom he could turn, and in despair he 
took passage home on the first steamer. He 
was trying to do a little work with his pen on 
the way home, but to cap the climax of his 
misfortunes a felon broke out on his right 
thumb, so that it was impossible for him to 
hold that versatile weapon. 

When he stepped on the gang plank of the 
steamer, as hopeless a young man as ever 
turned his face toward America, whom should 
he see but Edward Everett Hale! He had 



THE GLORY OF THE STRONG 115 

once met Dr. Hale, but only on a single occa- 
sion, and considerable time had passed since, 
and he felt that he had no claim on him, and 
no reason to believe that the preacher, editor, 
and author would remember him at all. But, 
to his great delight, before he had a chance 
even to test the recognition, he was grasped 
by the hand, and Dr. Hale said: "I am de- 
lighted, Mr. , to see you. I had no idea 

that I should know a soul on board, and now 
we will have a pleasant passage over. ,, 

It was not very long until, with character- 
istic sympathy, Dr. Hale had learned all the 
deeps and shallows of his young friend's mis- 
fortunes and hopeless mood. " Let me write 
your letters/' he said to the young man; 
11 there is nothing I enjoy so much as writing/' 

So Dr. Hale became the poor fellow's aman- 
uensis, and from dictation wrote up all the 
work he had on hand. The young man was 
seasick a good part of the way over, and 
when he was confined to his stateroom, Dr. 
Hale went down and spent hours every day, 
telling him stories, cheering him out of him- 
self, and acting like a professional entertainer, 



1 1 6 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

until, before the voyage was over, he had 
made a new man out of the despairing youth. 

When they arrived in Boston, this marvel- 
ously busy man, who carries what would seem 
to many people the burdens of a score of men 
upon his shoulders, did not rest until he had 
put his discouraged fellow-voyager on his feet 
again. 

It is said that when this story was told to a 
literary man in Boston, he replied: u We 
don't consider that much of anything for Hale 
to do. Why, there is hardly a man of my 
age about Boston who has been suffering, or 
friendless, or discouraged, but Dr. Hale has 
put him on his feet ; and at what cost to him- 
self, no man knows. There are a dozen well- 
known men I could mention who, but for that 
grand man, would have gone to the dogs. I 
am one of them myself — God bless him! M 

And yet, as in this case of the poor fellow 
on shipboard, it seemed such a little thing to 
do that many people would not have thought 
it worth while ; but the value was priceless to 
the man who received it. 



THE GLORY OF THE STRONG 117 

" It was only a helping hand, 

And it seemed of little availing; 

But its clasp would warm, 

And it saved from harm 

A brother whose strength was failing. 

11 Its touch was tender as angel wings, 
But it rolled the stone from the hidden 

springs 
And pointed the way to higher things, 
Tho it seemed of little availing. ' ' 



IX 

HARDIHOOD THE SAFEGUARD OF 
VIRTUE 

Chivalry laid great stress on the physical 
strength and endurance of the knight. It de- 
veloped men who were not only mighty of arm, 
skillful with the sword and spear, and agile on 
their feet, but men who had constitutions like 
iron, who could fight all day and ride all night 
without food or drink. Everything that could 
be done was done to build up the young 
knight in his power to resist fatigue. In or- 
der that the young squire who was designed 
for knighthood might not be handicapped by 
paternal tenderness, which perhaps would have 
softened too much such rigorous proofs of 
courage and labor in a domestic education, a 
knight was often led to place his son in the 
house of another knight, superior to himself 
perhaps in strength, or skill, or valor, tho not 
in rank, to learn the office of a squire, and to 
acquire the knowledge and vigor necessary to 
knighthood. The courts and the castles thus 



THE SAFEGUARD OF VIRTUE 1 1 9 

became schools where the young warriors were 
formed who were destined for the service and 
defense of the state ; laborious games were 
here practiced, in which the body acquired 
flexibility, agility, and the vigor so necessary 
in battle; running at the ring, courses of 
horses and of lances prepared for those tourna- 
ments which were only faint images of war. 

The account given by the historian of the 
life of Boucicaut proves how laborious those 
exercises were by which the youth formed to 
fatigue and hardship were prepared for war. 
" Sometimes," says the historian, speaking of 
Boucicaut, "he attempted to leap on a horse 
armed from head to foot ; at other times he 
ran as far and as fast as he could, to accus- 
tom himself to take long breaths and to suffer 
much fatigue ; then he would wield the ax in 
different ways, and strike the ball with the 
mallet. To inure himself to armor, and to 
accustom his arms to move easily under its 
weight, he made sudden jumps, armed with all 
his parts of armor, and danced in a coat of 
mail ; vaulted, without setting his foot in the 
stirrup, on a courser, armed at all points; 



1 2 O TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

vaulted behind a warrior on his war horse, only 
holding by the warrior's arm by one hand; 
placing one hand on the saddle bow of a war 
horse, and the other between his ears, he 
seized him by the mane, and vaulted over him 
as he ran in the open field. If two walls of 
plaister were at six feet distance, the height 
of a tower, by strength and skill he would 
mount to the top of one and leap to and come 
down the other without slip or fall ; also he 
would ascend a ladder set against the highest 
wall, without touching it with his feet, but 
leaping with two hands from one step to the 
other, armed with a coat of brass armor ; and 
when he was at home, he attempted to throw 
the lance, or perform some other arduous 
feats of war." 

It was also to the squires that the knights 
confided in the heat of battle the prisoners 
they took. This spectacle, which was a living 
lesson of address and courage, representing 
continually to the young warrior new methods 
of defense and of becoming superior to the 
enemy, gave him the means, at the same time, 
of proving his own valor and of judging 



THE SAFEGUARD OF VIRTUE 121 

whether he was capable of sustaining so many 
labors and perils. Thus, a weak and inex- 
perienced youth was not exposed to bear the 
heavy toil and burden of war without having 
learned, long before, whether his strength and 
his talents were equal to such a charge. 
( I have been glad to give these illustrations 
of the emphasis placed upon personal hardi- 
hood in the heroic age of chivalry because I 
think perhaps there is not enough emphasis 
put on it in our time. While the brutality of 
some of our modern sports is enough to shock 
any one, for the most part we give ourselves 
up far too much to what the old Methodist 
fathers called " softness and needless self-in- 
dulgence. ,, Many of the most brilliant ca- 
reers in all history have owed their glory to 
the fact that the toil, self-denial, and hard- 
ship which a young man found it necessary to 
endure in order to win his way at all, devel- 
oped a self-reliant, hardy, vigorous character 
which was to him the safeguard of virtue, 
and shielded him from many temptations that 
would have been his ruin if he had been per- 
mitted to live a weaker and more self-indulgent 



1 2 2 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

life. Many young men are ruined by the very 
kindness of the circumstances which surround 
them. Many another young man has been, 
like Samson, able to fight lions, or struggle 
against odds with poor weapons, so long as he 
was kept on the firing line of earnest and 
faithful battle ; but could not withstand days 
of ease, and luxury, and the blandishments 
of Delilah. Many a man who has been able to 
face the lion's paw and who has left the lion 
dead and come away himself unscathed, has 
been eaten up with the moths of idleness and 
self-indulgence. \ 

There is a new way of swindling the gov- 
ernment, which is called "coin sweating/' 
Sweating a coin is merely robbing it of a por- 
tion of its legal weight without in any manner 
altering its appearance. Manifestly gold coins 
alone would appeal to the sweater, for silver 
would hardly pay for the trouble. It is prac- 
ticed west of the Rocky Mountains in the 
United States more frequently than anywhere 
else, because the large twenty-dollar gold 
pieces make a shining mark for these coin 
sweaters. The process of robbing a coin of a 



THE SAFEGUARD OF VIRTUE 12 3 

part of its metal is simple. The gold piece is 
merely immersed, or suspended, in a mixture 
of nitric and hydrochloric acids which attacks 
the metal at once. So strong is this acid that 
in a few minutes it will absorb from one to 
two dollars' worth of the gold from a twenty- 
dollar gold piece. The coin is then washed 
in water and polished with whiting, as other- 
wise its surface would betray the ordeal 
through which it had passed, showing " pock- 
marks" in great variety. 

There is a great deal of coin sweating in 
character. Many a young man who has been 
full weight gold so long as he went about his 
business in the market place and did his work 
in a brave and manly way, has lost in the true 
weight of manhood by being immersed in an 
acid of idleness, or a mingled acid of ease and 
dissipation. Nothing is w r orse for any young 
man than to get settled in his mind the idea 
that it is desirable for him to have an easy berth 
in life. Easy places are always for weaklings 
and never develop strong men. If a man has 
any high ambitions and ideals for himself, then 
let him fight shy of an easy place with as much 



1 24 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

fear of contamination as he would of a pest- 
house, for it is far more dangerous to his hope 
of success. 

Great qualities come out under severe exer- 
tion, and under long continued exertion, where 
a man is put on his mettle and must do his best 
or go under. Mr. Julian Ralph, one of our 
greatest journalists, tells how, during the days 
when he was getting his education as a re- 
porter, he followed a New York millionaire 
day after day, and night after night, because 
he thought he knew something in which the 
public was keenly interested. "I followed 
him," says Mr. Ralph, "for days, as I would 
have followed a balloon, or a kidnapped girl, 
or the general in command of an army. To 
illustrate why I did this," continues the jour- 
nalist, "let me say that one day a friend of 
mine met a cowboy, fifty miles from any town 
or camp, dragging a steer by a rope. He had 
lost his horse and was walking. The sun was 
tropical, water was nowhere to be had, Indians 
were likely to appear and kill him ; still he 
tugged at his burden, which was harder to pull 
than if it had been dead. My friend inquired 



THE SAFEGUARD OF VIRTUE 12 5 

where he was dragging the 'cow', and was 
told that the cowboy's destination was a place 
two days' distant on horseback. 

"'Why!' my friend exclaimed, ' what 
makes you try to pull a " cow" all that dis- 
tance ? ' 

tl i Because I've got it to do ! ' was the la- 
conic answer." 

I tell you that that young cowboy had 
found the secret of success in this world or 
any other. I believe in the poetry and ro- 
mance of life as much as any man ; I believe 
in the beauty and glory of enthusiasm ; but I 
assure you that the poetry and the romance 
and the enthusiasm of living come mostly to 
the men who are true to their duty, and who, 
when they are face to face with- unpleasant 
labor, do not dodge it, or shirk it, or sneak 
away, but grit their teeth and clinch their 
fists and say, " I've got it to do ! " 

I am sure I should render any man who 
hears me a great service if I could convince 
him beyond peradventure that it is never wise 
to seek the easy path, but rather to seek the 
road that leads to the highest and noblest 



1 2 6 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

achievement. The soldier who has the spirit of 
the true soldier in him has the victory in view. 
The hardships of the march, the unpalatable 
food, sleeping on the ground, — all these things 
are only incidents, and are of small account, 
because his heart is set on the battle which he 
is to win. Many young men fall into evil 
ways because they have not trained them- 
selves to do without luxuries which they can- 
not afford. The hardihood to live on two 
dollars a week when a man cannot afford three 
is a tremendous wall around virtue and right- 
eousness, and has saved many a man's charac- 
ter from breakdown. 

Governor Taylor of Tennessee tells of an 
interesting interview with a woman who was 
seeking a pardon for her husband. She was 
ushered into the governor's presence and he 
inquired courteously, "Well, madam, what 
can I do for you ? " 

11 1 want to see the governor, sir." 
" Well, I am the governor; what is it ? " 
"Ah, sir, my man he's been put in prison, 
sir, and I want to ask if you won't let him 
out." 



THE SAFEGUARD OF VIRTUE 12? 

The governor's face hardened. But he did 
not turn her away. " What was he sent up 
for ? " he asked. 

11 You see, sir, we were hungry, and he just 
stole a ham to keep us from starving." 

"Well, I'm sorry, but I can't do anything 
for you. Your man must serve the sentence. 
There's too much stealing going on." 

"O governor, please, please let him out," 
pleaded the woman, the tears flowing down 
her cheeks. 

The tears had their effect. The governor 
softened. He decided to question her a little. 
He reflected that this poor woman doubtless 
needed her husband. " But why," he asked, 
" should I give your man his freedom ? " 

" Because, sir, we are hungry again, and 
we ain't got no more ham." 

There are a good many young fellows whose 
careers break down in the middle, and they 
drop out of sight, broken and ruined, because 
they think they must feed themselves and 
clothe themselves on the best that is going, 
whether they earn the money to pay for it or 
not. If every young man could catch the 



128 TWENTIETH CENTURY KNIGHTHOOD 

spirit of the young squire who was fitting him- 
self for knighthood, and deny himself any lux- 
ury or indulgence that stood between him and 
the purest, manliest life, he would find that 
the hardihood developed under such discipline 
would be the best possible safeguard for his 
career. 

„ ( The world needs strong men. We have 
weaklings enough. Too many are only broken 
reeds. We need men of backbone, and har- 
dened muscles, and stalwart purpose, who 
stand up to face the battle of life without 
flinching. For such men there never was a 
greater call than there is now. They are 
wanted in every department of human life. 
Christ needs strong, valiant Christians — men 
with His own spirit who sought not for the 
easy berth but took the hard way of tempta- 
tion and trial, of loneliness and struggle, be- 
cause that was the path of duty and of help- 
fulness. The brightest opportunity before any 
young man in the world to-day is the call that 
is made to be a knight of Jesus Christ. Not 
to be a patron, not to be a soft, self-indulgent 
admirer of Christianity, but to be a knight, 



THE SAFEGUARD OF VIRTUE I2g 

sworn to defend Christ and his righteous cause 
and his holy standards of living anywhere and 
everywhere where men are tempted and tried. 
For such men this is the most romantic age 
in history. And such a call comes to every 
young man. We do not all have splendid 
physiques, and some deeds of hardihood in 
which the old knights rejoice are beyond our 
power, but the higher deeds of the loftier 
chivalry, of upright thinking, of pure conduct, 
of self-denying devotion, are within the reach 
of every one of us. ~—^~'"' 



X 

TEMPERANCE THE FLOWER OF 
MODERN KNIGHTHOOD 

I It can be easily understood that an institu- 
tion enjoying and demanding of its knights 
such characteristics as we have seen in this se- 
ries of discussions, would also demand of them, 
in order that such traits of character might be 
maintained, that they should have mastery 
over themselves, and live sober and temperate 
lives. Such characteristics as hardihood, cour- 
age, simplicity, generosity, loyalty, honesty, 
truth, purity, reverence, and compassion can 
only be developed in a man where mind and 
heart and body are all mastered and held in 
control by a temperate, sober will. So it is 
not to be wondered at that chivalry made 
much of such self-control, and placed temper- 
ance among its cardinal virtues. Self-mastery, 
which is always necessary to a temperate life, 
is the very flower of manhood in our own time 
as it has been in every age of the world. 



FLOWER OF MODERN KNIGHTHOOD 131 

Mr. Charles George Gordon, in his masterly 
essay on self-control, declares that at each 
moment of a man's life he is either a king or 
a slave. As he surrenders to a wrong appe- 
tite, indeed to any human weakness, as he 
falls prostrate in hopeless subjection to any 
surrounding combination of circumstances, he 
is a slave. On the other hand, as he day by 
day crushes out human weakness, masters op- 
posing elements within him, and re-creates a 
new self from the sin and folly of his past, he 
is a king. He is a king ruling with wisdom 
over himself. Alexander conquered the whole 
world except — Alexander. Emperor of all the 
rest of the earth, he was still the servile slave 
of his own passion.i 

The same virile writer truly says that self- 
control may be developed in precisely the 
same manner as we tone up a weak muscle 
through exercise day by day. That if a man 
will set himself to it, he may put himself 
through a system of moral gymnastics. He 
may do every day a few acts that require self- 
denial, that are disagreeable to him ; and the 
doing of these things will make him stronger 



1 32 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

in his power for instant action in any hour of 
temptation to evil. 

There are many ways in which you may 
discipline yourself, so as to get the whip of 
life in your own hand. You might drop for a 
time an intensely interesting book at the most 
thrilling page of the story; or jump out of 
bed at the first moment of waking ; or walk 
home when you are perfectly able to do so 
but when the temptation is to take a car; or 
give yourself up to conversation and compel 
yourself to be gracious and agreeable to some 
one who is naturally very distasteful to you. 
All these are methods of self-discipline which 
lead toward the point of controlling your own 
nature. 

But this is only saying in another way what 
Jesus said in a better way when he declared 
that if any man would be his disciple he must 
deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow 
him. What is that but saying that he must 
master all his evil tendencies, must control all 
the forces of his soul, and turn them toward 
righteousness? 

All this has to do very materially with tern- 



FL O WER OF MODERN KNIGHTHOOD 1 3 3 

perance. The temptation in all of us is to 
self-indulgence, to live intemperately. Of 
course this applies on all sides of our life. 

Many of us are intemperate in our speech; 
we say things carelessly. Our temperament 
is such that we are easily excited ; it is as 
easy to stir us up as it is to set fire to a mag- 
azine of gunpowder, and after we have ex- 
ploded we often wish we had not. If we are 
to be well-rounded men, and have the full 
measure of the force we ought to have in the 
world, we must get the mastery of mind and 
heart so that we shall be able to put a bridle 
on the tongue, and speak with temperance and 
wisdom. A great part of the strife that causes 
so much misery in the world comes from in- 
temperate speech. Nothing could be truer 
than the utterance of the wise man of Scrip- 
ture: "A soft answer turneth away wrath : 
but grievous words stir up anger." 

Many are intemperate in their eating. 
They load themselves down until neither the 
body nor the mind ever has an opportunity to 
show what it could do if it had a fair chance. 
The people that Paul talks about, " whose God 



134 s TWENTIETH CENTURY KNIGHTHOOD 

is their belly,' ' have still their representatives 
among men — men whose stomachs are like 
nature in this, that they abhor a vacuum ; men 
whose capacity to store away huge masses of 
food is their chief characteristic ; men whose 
bodies are always sluggish and whose minds 
are ever dull simply because they have no self- 
control over their appetite, and the body in- 
stead of being properly nourished is clogged 
and over- weighted. 

But the greatest foe to mankind that enters 
through the door of self-indulgence is that of 
strong drink. It makes more men slaves than 
all other tyrants combined on earth to-day. 
One of the saddest features of it is that its 
slaves are often the very brightest minds, 
and people who would otherwise be the most 
useful. Edward W. Bok says that one thing 
that led him to make up his mind never to 
touch liquor was the ruin which he saw it bring 
to some of the finest minds with which he had 
ever come in contact. During his short liter- 
ary life he has seen some of the smartest lit- 
erary men dethroned from splendid positions 
owing to nothing else but their indulgence in 



FLOWER OF MODERN KNIGHTHOOD 1 3 5 

wine. He has known men with salaries of 
thousands of dollars a year come to beggary 
from drink. Mr. Bok says a man recently 
applied to him for any position he could offer 
him, who was only a little while ago one of 
the most brilliant editorial writers in the news- 
paper profession, a man who two years before 
easily commanded one hundred dollars for a 
single editorial in his special field. That man 
has become so unreliable from drink that edi- 
tors are afraid of his articles, and so he sits in 
a cellar in one of our cities addressing news- 
paper wrappers for one dollar a thousand. 

I was looking through a large foundry and 
hardware company's business the other day, 
when the proprietor, who was with me, pointed 
out a man who was nailing up some packing 
cases, and said: " There is a man who until 
two or three years ago was the confidential 
clerk of one of the greatest business houses in 
Cleveland, and received a salary of three thou- 
sand dollars a year. He came to me and begged 
to get on at any price, and is now earning nine 
dollars a week." I asked what was the mat- 
ter, and it only took one word to give the 



136 TWENTIETH CENTURY KNIGHTHOOD 

answer, "Drink." How many tragedies that 
one word can explain. 

"But," you say, "that man drank to ex- 
cess. He might have gone on drinking mod- 
erately all his life." The trouble is that as 
one drop of kerosene has been known to burn 
down a great city, so a single glass of wine 
has often fanned into flame a smoldering ap- 
petite inherited from the past, and brought 
ruin to a beautiful career. With all the light 
we have on such matters in these days, with 
the certainty that there lie dormant in all our 
bodies hereditary tendencies which if aroused 
to action may rage like a wild beast, and 
with the further certainty that no man in 
health has the slightest need for alcoholic 
stimulant, it is a very useless and reckless risk 
that any man takes when he tampers with 
strong drink. 

A bright young man, wishing to gather a 
few statistics for himself on the question, 
picked out at random twenty-eight of the 
most successful business men in the United 
States, and wrote them confidentially, for his 
own information, asking what their habits 



FL O WER OF MODERN KNIGHTHOOD 1 3 7 

were as to strong drink. He found that 
twenty-two out of these twenty-eight business 
giants were total abstainers. They abstained 
because they wanted clear heads and sound 
bodies to bear the mighty strain of their great 
business exertions. Nobody trusts a man's 
judgment in business matters if it is known 
that he has been drinking. 

Field Marshal Lord Wolseley, the British 
Commander in Chief, has been carrying on 
careful and exhaustive experiments with a view 
to ascertaining the relative effects of alcohol 
and of total abstinence upon the physical 
endurance and staying qualities of English 
troops. A newspaper writer makes this sum- 
mary of these experiments : Advantage has 
been taken both of the annual maneuvers as 
well as the wars which England has had on 
hand in recent years, to examine carefully the 
question. One regiment would be deprived 
of every drop of stimulant, while another be- 
longing to the same brigade would be allowed 
to purchase as usual its malt liquors at the 
canteen, and a third, probably a Highland 
corps, would receive a sailor's ration of grog 



1 3 8 T WEN TIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

in the form of whisky. The result of these 
experiments led the British war department 
to decide, not on the ground of principle, but 
solely for the sake of maintaining the power 
of endurance of the troops then engaged in 
the Soudan campaign, not to permit a single 
drop of stimulant in camp, save for hospital 
use. Spirits, wine, and malt liquors have 
been barred from the officers' mess table as 
well as from the regimental canteen, and from 
general in command down to the drummer 
boys. And the camp followers' liquid refresh- 
ments have been restricted to tea and oatmeal 
water. Thanks to total abstinence, the men 
have been made able to make forced marches 
of the most extraordinary character, across the 
burning desert and under a blazing sun the 
heat of whose rays can only be appreciated by 
those who have lived under the equator. In- 
deed, what aroused most admiration at the 
battle of Atbara, was the calm and collected 
manner in which the Highland regiments ad- 
vanced across the bullet-swept plain in front 
of the Dervish Zereba, apparently wholly free 
from undue excitement and coolly keeping 



FLOWER OF MODERN KNIGHTHOOD 1 39 

their formation with as much, exactness as if 
they had merely been on the drill ground. 

The knight of the twentieth century man- 
hood cannot afford to be indifferent to all this 
light. Life gets more complex every year; it 
requires that a man shall have all his powers, 
and have them at his best, if he is to make a 
great success in life. It is infinitely better, 
therefore, to give his own character and career 
the benefit of the doubt, and, mastering his 
own nature, refuse to give admission to an in- 
vading habit which never helps anybody and 
which works the ruin of multitudes of the 
brightest and strongest men of the time. 

Many young men are led into evil habits by 
the bad example of some famous person who 
has succeeded, not on account of his bad habit 
but in spite of it, through some unusually 
strong ability. Senator Chauncey Depew has 
recently told this story concerning a member 
of Congress who is in the habit of taking too. 
much for his own good : The Congressman 
was being shaved by an aged colored barber in 
Washington. The shop was a favorite one 
with the prominent men of the capital, and 



140 TWENTIETH CENTURY KNIGHTHOOD 

the old colored man who presided over it 
often boasted that he had shaved every great 
statesman since the Madison administration. 
On this day the Congressman said to the bar- 
ber: " Uncle, you must have shaved many 
famous men." 

" Oh, yes, sah; I has indeed." 

* ' And a great many of those famous per- 
sonages must have sat in this very chair where 
I am sitting, eh ? " 

"Dat's right, sah. Dey's set jes' whar yo' 
is a settin' des moment, sah. Yes, sah. An* 
I'se jes' been a noticin' a mighty cur'us simi- 
larity between yo' and Dan'el Webster, sail." 

"You don't say!" exclaimed the highly 
delighted lawmaker. " Is the similarity in the 
shape of my head, uncle ? " 

"Oh, no, sah. 'Tain't dat." 

11 Is it my manner ? " 

"No, boss, 'tain't yore manner, nudder; 
hit's yore breff." 

As a rule, the young man who sets himself 
to aping the vices and sins of some famous 
man ends with the vices and sins, and never 
rises to any of the good qualities which have 



FLOWER OF MODERN KNIGHTHOOD 141 

given to the great man some measure of suc- 
cess in spite of his defects. 

You may depend upon it that, however fas- 
cinating the picture of a moderate indulgence 
in strong drink may be to you, it is always 
fraught with peril, and that from among the 
moderate drinkers has come every man who 
has fallen into drunkenness and debauchery. 
The wisest man who ever lived, and one who 
had a wide opportunity for observation and 
experience, has put on record his deliberate 
statement that "Wine is a mocker, strong 
drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived 
thereby is not wise." And he has given as 
his most earnest exhortation, " Be not among 
winebibbers; .... for the drunkard and 
the glutton shall come to poverty." This 
wise man returns to the subject again and 
again, and finally sums up the influence of 
strong drink, as a bookkeeper might write 
down the items in his ledger, and this is his 
conclusion: " Who hath woe? who hath sor- 
row? who hath contentions? who hath bab- 
bling? who hath wounds without cause? who 
hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long 



142 TWENTIE TH CENTUR Y KNIGHTHOOD 

at the wine ; they that go to seek mixed wine. 
Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, 
when it giveth his color in the cup, when it 
moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth 
like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder." 



Books by <£ <£ 

DR. LOUIS ALBERT BANKS, 



• »/\/N/N/>/S/S*^%» 



Christ and His Friencfe, 

A Collection of Revival Sermons, Simple and Direct, and Wholly 
Devoid of Oratorical Artifice, but Rich in Natural Eloquence, and 
Burning with Spiritual Fervor. The author has strengthened 
and enlivened them with many illustrations and anecdotes. 
12mo, Cloth, Gilt Top, Rough Edges. Price, $1.50; post-free. 

National Presbyterian, Indianapolis: "One of the most marked revivals 
attended their delivery, resulting in hundreds of conversions. Free from extrav- 
agance and fantasticism, in good taste, dwelling upon the essentials of religious 
faith, their power has not been lost in transference to the printed page." 

New York Observer: M These sermons are mainly hortatory . . . always 
aiming at conviction or conversion. They abound in fresh and forcible illus- 
trations. . . . They furnish a fine specimen of the best way to reach the popular 
ear, and may be commended as putting the claims of the Gospel upon men's at- 
tention in a very direct and striking manner. No time is wasted in rhetorical 
ornament, but every stroke tells upon the main point." 

The Fisherman and His Friends* 

A Companion Volume to " Christ and His Friends," consisting of 
Thirty-one Stirring Revival Discourses, full of Stimulus and Sug- 
gestion for Ministers, Bible class Teachers, and all Christian 
Workers and Others who Desire to become Proficient in the 
Supreme Capacity of Winning Souls to Christ. They furnish a 
rich store of fresh spiritual inspiration, their subjects being strong, 
stimulating, and novel in treatment, without being sensational or 
elaborate. They were originally preached by the author in a 
successful series of revival meetings, which resulted in many 
conversions. 12mo, Cloth, Gilt Top. Price, $1.50; post-free. 

Bishop John F. Hurst: "It is a most valuable addition to our devotional 

literature. " 

New York Independent : " There is no more distinguished example of the 
modern people's preacher in the American pulpit to-day than Dr. Banks. This 
Volume fairly thrills and rocks with the force injected into its utterance. " 



BOOKS BY DR. LOUIS ALBERT BANKS — Continued. 

Paul and His Friends* 

A companion volume to " Christ and His Friends," and " The 
Fisherman and His Friends," being similarly bound and ar- 
ranged. The book contains thirty-one stirring revival sermons 
delivered in a special series of revival services at the First M. E. 
Church, Cleveland. 12mo, Cloth, Gilt Top, Rough Edges. 
Price, $1.50. 

The Christian Gentleman* 

A volume of original and practical addresses to young men. The 
addresses were originally delivered to large and enthusiastic au- 
diences of men, in Cleveland, at the Young Men's Christian As- 
sociation Hall. 12mo, Buckram. Price, 75 cents. 

Hero Tales from Sacred Story* 

The Romantic Stories of ^ible Characters Retold in G-raphic 
Style, with Modern Parallels and Striking Applications. Richly 
Illustrated with 19 Full-page, Half-tone Illus*-~i,tions from Fa- 
mous Paintings. 12mo, Cloth, Gilt Top, Covev Design by George 
Wharton Edwards. Price, $1.50. 

Christian Work, New York: " One can not imagine a better book to put 
into the hands of a young man or young woman than this." 

The Saloon-Keeper's Ledger* 

The Business and Financial Side of the Drink Question. Among 
the items treated are: The Saloon Debtor to Disease, Private and 
Social Immorality, Ruined Homes, Lawlessness and Crime, and 
Political Corruption. 12mo, Cloth. Price, 75 cents. 

The Christian Herald, Detroit: " This is one of the most notable contri- 
butions to temperance literature of recent years. The discourses are the master- 
pieces of an expert, abounding in apt illustrations and invincible logic, sparkling 
with anecdote, and scintillating with unanswerable facts." 

Sermon Stories for Boys and Girls* 

Short Stories of great interest, with which are interwoven les- 
sons of practical helpfulness for young minds. The stories have 
been previously told in the author's congregation, where their potency 
and attractiveness have become surprisingly manifest. The book has 
a special value for the Sunday-school, the nursery, the pastor's study, 
and the school-room. 12mo, Cloth, Artistic Cover Design, Illus' 
trated, Price, $1,00, 



JUN21 1900 



